PARIS: Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died two decades ago aged 122, should retain the title of the oldest person on record, French researchers said Monday, rejecting claims of fraud.
Ageing specialists Jean-Marie Robine and Michel Allard, who declared Calment the longest-lived person in the 1990s, said their review of old and new data confirmed she “remains the oldest human whose age is well-documented.”
“Recently the claim that families Calment and Billot (her in-laws) organized a conspiracy concerning tax fraud based on identity fraud between mother and daughter gained international media attention,” Robine, Allard and two other researchers wrote in The Journals of Gerontology.
“Here, we reference the original components of the validation as well as additional documentation to address various claims of the conspiracy theory and provide evidence for why these claims are based on inaccurate facts,” they wrote.
Calment, who used to joke that God must have forgotten her, died in southern France in 1997, setting a longevity record that has been questioned.
Last December, Russian researchers Valery Novoselov and Nikolay Zak claimed in a report that Calment had actually died in 1934 and that her daughter Yvonne stole her identity to avoid paying inheritance tax.
According to their research, the woman who died in 1997 was Yvonne, not her mother, and at a young 99.
The Russian report was based on biographies, interviews and photos of Jeanne Calment, witness testimony, and public records of the city of Arles where she lived.
The new article insists Calment’s identity “has not been usurped,” according to a statement from the French research institute INSERM, where Robine works as research director.
The authors cross-checked the original data used to validate the centenarian’s identity with newly uncovered documents, to show “there was neither tax fraud nor falsification of Jeanne Calment’s identity” the article says.
The team also turned to mathematical modelling to counter arguments that her considerable age was impossible.
In every 10 million centenarians, one can reach the age of 123, they said, “a probability that is certainly small, but that is far from making Ms Calment a statistical impossibility.”
“All the documents uncovered contradict the Russian thesis,” Robine told AFP, as the team demanded a retraction from Zak and Novoselov.
Novoselov, however, insisted Monday that the original work verifying Calment’s identity and age “is full of flaws and mistakes,” while Zak said he found the new article “weak.”
Born on February 21, Calment became the biggest attraction of the southern French city of Arles since Vincent Van Gogh, who spent a year there in 1888.
She said she had met the artist when he came to her uncle’s store to buy paints, and remembered him as “ugly as sin” and having an “awful character.”
Calment used to talk of enjoying chocolate and port and would smoke an occasional cigarette before her health deteriorated.
INSERM said however that it could not “support any requests for exhumation” of Calment’s body, on which no autopsy was performed after her death.
No cheating: Frenchwoman was world’s oldest person, researchers say
No cheating: Frenchwoman was world’s oldest person, researchers say
- Calment “remains the oldest human whose age is well-documented”
Egypt reveals restored colossal statues of pharaoh in Luxor
- Amenhotep III, one of the most prominent pharaohs, ruled during the 500 years of the New Kingdom, which was the most prosperous time for ancient Egypt
LUXOR: Egypt on Sunday revealed the revamp of two colossal statues of a prominent pharaoh in the southern city of Luxor, the latest in the government’s archeological events that aim at drawing more tourists to the country.
The giant alabaster statues, known as the Colossi of Memnon, were reassembled in a renovation project that lasted about two decades. They represent Amenhotep III, who ruled ancient Egypt about 3,400 years ago.
“Today we are celebrating, actually, the finishing and the erecting of these two colossal statues,” Mohamed Ismail, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said ahead of the ceremony.
Ismail said the colossi are of great significance to Luxor, a city known for its ancient temples and other antiquities. They’re also an attempt to “revive how this funerary temple of King Amenhotep III looked like a long time ago,” Ismail said.
Amenhotep III, one of the most prominent pharaohs, ruled during the 500 years of the New Kingdom, which was the most prosperous time for ancient Egypt. The pharaoh, whose mummy is showcased at a Cairo museum, ruled between 1390–1353 BC, a peaceful period known for its prosperity and great construction, including his mortuary temple, where the Colossi of Memnon are located, and another temple, Soleb, in Nubia.
The colossi were toppled by a strong earthquake in about 1200 BC that also destroyed Amenhotep III’s funerary temple, said Ismail.
They were fragmented and partly quarried away, with their pedestals dispersed. Some of their blocks were reused in the Karnak temple, but archeologists brought them back to rebuild the colossi, according to the Antiquities Ministry.
In late 1990s, an Egyptian German mission, chaired by German Egyptologist Hourig Sourouzian, began working in the temple area, including the assembly and renovation of the colossi.
“This project has in mind … to save the last remains of a once-prestigious temple,” she said.
The statues show Amenhotep III seated with hands resting on his thighs, with their faces looking eastward toward the Nile and the rising sun. They wear the nemes headdress surmounted by the double crowns and the pleated royal kilt, which symbolizes the pharaoh’s rule.
Two other small statues on the pharaoh’s feet depict his wife, Tiye.
The colossi — 14.5 meters and 13.6 meters respectively — preside over the entrance of the king’s temple on the western bank of the Nile. The 35-hectare complex is believed to be the largest and richest temple in Egypt and is usually compared to the temple of Karnak, also in Luxor.
The colossi were hewn in Egyptian alabaster from the quarries of Hatnub, in Middle Egypt. They were fixed on large pedestals with inscriptions showing the name of the temple, as well as the quarry.
Unlike other monumental sculptures of ancient Egypt, the colossi were partly compiled with pieces sculpted separately, which were fixed into each statue’s main monolithic alabaster core, the ministry said.
Sunday’s unveiling in Luxor came just six weeks after the inauguration of the long-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum, the centerpiece of the government’s bid to boost the country’s tourism industry. The mega project is located near the famed Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx.
In recent years, the sector has started to recover after the coronavirus pandemic and amid Russia’s war on Ukraine — both countries are major sources of tourists visiting Egypt.
“This site is going to be a point of interest for years to come,” said Tourism and Antiquities Minister Sherif Fathy, who attended the unveiling ceremony. “There are always new things happening in Luxor.”
A record number of about 15.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2024, contributing about 8 percent of the country’s GDP, according to official figures.
Fathy, the minister, has said about 18 million tourists are expected to visit the country this year, with authorities hoping for 30 million visitors annually by 2032.
