Shroud of Turin Image


Shroud Image
June 1, 2008


The Shroud of Turin is a burial cloth of a man in antiquity. The only strong evidence to the contrary is the image on the cloth itself. Due to the exactness of the image, exactness that seems to indicate intentional design, many make the assumption that it is a work of art. It is not, I believe it is the result of a conscious intentional act, a sort of end by-product of a process/event. It is a singular archeological artifact in that no other object like it exists.

When it comes to the Shroud of Turin, the main issue and mystery for the scientific community is, “How is the image imprinted on the linen cloth?”

It appears that for every point supporting a specific hypothesis, two others arise to contradict the proposed theory. It is highly complex item with many unique characteristics and embedded anomalies. It’s a marvel and a mystery because the more that science explores the object, the richer and more complex the mystery becomes. Science does not have a comprehensive explanation, or  a theory for its creation, nor can science replicate something coming even close to the image with its range of anomalies. Many images of a man have been produced using differing methods but not one with all the characteristics and anomalies that this object has.

“The image is the result of many superficial yellow linen fibers. The color is discontinuously distributed in the image area, and does not penetrate either the cloth or the individual, microscopic linen fibers. Image distribution poses a perplexing problem for scientists.” Ray Rogers – A Chemist’s Perspective on the Shroud of Turin

The Main Facts are
(1) that the Shroud and Images exist and has a modern history going back directly to 1349 CE.
(2) It has been the property of the Royal House of Savoy since its transfer in 1453 CE. from Margaret de Charney, the granddaughter of Geoffroi de Charney, the famous author/celebrity Knight that brought the Shroud out of hiding.
(3)Geoffroi is the nephew of the famous Templar Preceptor that was burnt alive with the Templar Grandmaster Jacque de Molay in 1314 outside of Paris.
(4) Official transfer of custodial stewardship to the Holy See of the Roman Catholic Church occurred in the reading of Last Will and Testament of the former King of Italy, Umberto II, in 1983.
(5) So for 530 years the Steward has been the head of the Royal House of Savoy.

This document is just going to give the Facts and Details known to date about the image and cloth itself, as I’ve discovered them in the literature. It is not the document to read my theory, nor the “History of the Shroud”. These are two separate documents.

BACKGROUND
The Shroud reemerged in 1349 and has a direct provenance connecting it to the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STRUP) in 1978. In 1978, the custodians of the Shroud allow a large group of scientist 120 straight hours of assess for the purpose of gathering data to test the different image-formation hypotheses.

In 1976 Dr. John Jackson and Bill Motten at Los Alamos National Laboratories placed a copy of the 1931 Giuseppe Enrie photo through a device called a VP-8 Analyzer and discovered the embedded spatial characteristics. Jackson and Motten were stunned to see "three-dimensional" results show up on the monitor screen from a reproduced 1931 Ernie image of the Shroud. The spatial data encoded into the image taken of the Shroud actually eliminates photography and painting as the possible mechanism for its creation and allowed them to conclude that the image was formed while the cloth was draped over an actual human body. The VP-8 Image Analyzer not only revealed a previously unknown information about the Shroud, it virtually eliminated the photographic and artistic theories, this in 1976.

In that same year of 1976, Max Frei's group, now called the Turin Scientific Commission, announces to the world that pollens found in sticky tape samples he took back in 1973 from the shroud were from plants exclusive to Israel and Turkey. 

These two bits of scientific information historically provided the actual motivation to form the team that would ultimately go and investigate it in the former Royal Palace, October 8th to the 13th, 1978. This diverse group of scientist became officially called the The Shroud of Turin Research Project or by the acronym STURP. A total of 120 continuous hours of testing was done, with team members working on different parts of the Shroud simultaneously.


PHOTONEGATIVE:
At face value the Shroud Image looks like a faded form of photographic negative, yet the evidence from the very start of the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) investigations has disputed the photographic hypothesis. It is certainly not a standard photographic image. Yet, when the Shroud is photographed the resulting negative is a positive image of the man it enshrouded. Additionally those photos have embedded within the image somehow spatial as well as holographic style information. How the photographic image of the artifact could transfer the embedded data is in itself a mystery.

The piece of evidence some would say damns the photonegative image idea is that the Shroud image resides in an ultra thin layer starch saccharides layer on the surface of the linen fibers. This thin layer is where the tonal–yellowing occurred creating the image. There is no evidence demonstrating that this material is chemically sensitized to low temperature light. In other words it is not photosensitive material, so how could in be a photo-like negative image.

Until the recent knowledge of pixels and the way the eye composes an image, understanding of this object was impossible.  In fact I submit that recognition of the depth of the mystery itself was not possible. In truth, it is only now at the turn of the millennium, with the development of our sophisticated technical tools and computers that the real Shroud of Turin story can begin to be told.

It has taken many individuals years of extensive in-depth technical analysis to truly see the complexity and science altering challenges that the Shroud images bring to Western Science. These are not questions about who produced the object, they are not about theology or philosophy, they are all about the how the artifacts imprinted images might have been produced, especially back in antiquity. It’s a question of science! I will grant that separating the two issues is often challenging at best but here I will attempt to outline simply the evidential data gathered on this most interesting archeological object.

The reason for plural “images” when discussing the Shroud is because there are four images on the cloth, front image of a man and back image of the same man, flowers around the body, waist up to the head, and a coin the size of a dime on each eye.  These images add much to the complexity of coming up with a plausible hypothesis.

EVIDENCE

  • • The cloth was an actual burial cloth with a man enshrouded within.
  • • It is an expensive well-made cloth of flax with a 3 over 1 herringbone weave. It is a single piece of linen cloth measuring about 14’ 3” by 3’ 7”. This corresponds with loom technology of the first century Palestine measurements of 2 cubits X 8 cubits.
  • • The burial is consistent with ancient first-century Jewish burial customs in all respects, including the attitude of the body (hands folded over loins), and type of burial clothes. The cloth (es) has been determines to be rapped in a specific manner around the body. The Sindon is the shroud itself, which wrapped the body. The Sudarium was a handkerchief like cloth that covered the face out of respect after death. It also protected the eyes from scavenged birds. There were chin bandages to keep the month closed and strips of cloth to bind the wrists and legs called the Othonia.
  • • Archeological evidence including the Shroud cloth itself is quite similar to the hem of a cloth found in the tombs of the Jewish fortress of Masada. The “Masada Cloth” dates to between 40 B.C. and 73 A.D. This kind of stitch has never been found in Medieval Europe.
  • • Several bouquets of flowers are found around the head and body (waist up) comprising hundreds of flowers. Many are vague or incomplete but Professor Whanger of Duke University in the States claims to have found "twenty-eight" different species of "plants whose images are sufficiently clear and complete to make a good comparison with the drawings in Flora Palaestina" and of those, "Twenty grow in Jerusalem itself, and the other eight grow potentially within the close vicinity of Jerusalem" and "Twenty-seven of these twenty-eight bloom in March and April, which corresponds to the time of Passover and the Crucifixion". "Twenty-eight" different species are found on the Shroud and all twenty-eight grow in Israel. Twenty grow in Jerusalem itself, and the other eight grow potentially within the close vicinity of Jerusalem, either in the Judean Desert or in the Dead Sea area or in both. All twenty-eight would have been available in Jerusalem markets in a fresh state.
  • • Pollens evidence shows that it spent time in Turkey and Palestine. A total of 58 different pollens were identified on the Shroud.  These pollens are native to four distinct areas around 1) the Dead Sea and the Negev, 2) the Anatolian Steppe (Edessa) of central and western Turkey, 3) the immediate environs of Constantinople, and 4) Western Europe. This shows that the object spent time in all these areas.
  • • The Pollen Evidence coincides with the Flower image Evidence.
  • • The wounds at the top of the head where created by a crown of tumbleweed a planet named gundelia tournefortii. It is an insect-pollinated plant that blooms in modern day Israel between March and May. The pollen spores lodged in the Shroud’s surface, as well as floral images mysteriously “imprinted” on the face of the cloth, could only have come from plants growing in a restricted area around Jerusalem.
  • • Dr. Garza-Valdes discovered oak tubules (microscopic splinters) in the blood of the occipital area (back of the head) as well as natron salts.
  • • Spectral Analysis of the rock dust taken from the foot area of the Shroud image is a specific Travertine matched exactly to stone found only at the Jerusalem Gate in Jerusalem and no where else. (Optical Engineer Sam Pellicori - 1978) (Dirt particles on the nose as well as on the left knee and heel.)
  • • Dr. Eugenia Nitowski (Utah archaeologist) in her studies of the cave tombs of Jerusalem noted the presence of Calcium Carbonate (limestone dust), the same as the limestone hills that tombs around Jerusalem were carved out of.
  • • The images are of the man enshrouded, coins of Pilate circa 29-32 CE. The coin images on the eyes are from the first century. They are Pilate Coins from 29 – 31 CE, specific coins of Jerusalem during the Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. It was a coin used in Jerusalem and nowhere else.
  • • The images were imprinted on the cloth after the blood and serum stains (forensic evidence).
  • • The mountains of forensic evidence and computer mapping of the wounds on the cloth outline clearly a picture of a brutally tortured man, one crucified in a manner specific to the biblical stories of Jesus, which was not the norm according to historians. This evidence includes the specific weapons used to inflict the wounds.
  • • Science deduces that there is no evidence of initial decomposition of the body, none. Even though the other evidence indicates a real corpse with rigor mortis lay within the cloth at the time of physical imprinting.
  • • The blood was on the Cloth before the image. The bloodstains on the Shroud are composed of hemoglobin and give a positive test for serum albumin. Numerous tests confirm this. The blood on the Shroud is real human blood, type AB (typed by Dr. Baima Ballone in Turin and confirmed in the U.S.).  This blood type is rare (3.2% of the world population according to Dr. Leoncio Garza-Valdes), the highest percentage being found in northern Palestine.
  • • No dyes or paints or oils have been found on the Cloth. Reflectance spectra of image areas, scorched areas, and aged linen were identical (Gilbert and Gilbert, 1982).  The conclusion is that all the observational methods applied by STURP failed to detect any of the historically known painting vehicles, media, or pigments, suggesting that the image was not a painting in any normal sense (Schwalbe & Rogers, 1982).
  • • Researchers believe that at least 50 artists were commissioned to paint replicas of the Shroud. When this process was completed the artist was allowed to then lay they're painting over the Shroud to "sanctify" them. Many excellent artists have attempted to recreate the image many of the times. These copies look like child stick drawings when compared to the original. These highly regarded paintings look nothing like the original. And why paint a shadow like negative image of Christ in the first place? And why not paint two or three, why is there only one Shroud.
  • The image on the Shroud had the spikes going through the wrist, not the hands as all medieval art depicts.

IMAGE
So here's what we know:  The image on this cloth does not have a directional lights source for shading and is created by a selective tone-browning of unknown process of a thin film of starch sustenance 1/100th the thickness of a human hair. Until recently, many believed that the tonal yellowing on the Shroud fibers were produced by a process which resulted in oxidation, dehydration and conjugation of the polysaccharide structure of the fibers of the linen itself. This has been shown to be partially incorrect. The coating, whether yellowed or clear, can be reduced with diimide or removed with adhesive leaving clear cellulose fiber underneath. This removes vapors, liquids, high-energy radiation, heat and pressure from the formation equation as currently understood in physics.

One of the most challenging aspects is that the image mostly resides in a layer at the tips of the outer linen fibers and that the yellowing is not distributed equally, in fact areas within the image areas may not have any yellowing at all!

In short, it appears that some level of intentional in design must have been at play in the creation of image. The process clearly was not random, it colored in a very specific manner, one that produced a near perfect negative image of the man it enshrouded, one with topographical/spatial/holographic styled informational characteristics.

Clearly, there is a scientific model we are missing, for there it is; an image “imprinted” in this ultra thin layer of starch on a traditional ancient linen burial cloth. An image created by all accounts deep in antiquity.

* The use of the word “imprinted” is the most exact terminology to describe the process, yet it normally implies an understood process. This is not the case when it comes to the image on the Shroud of Turin.

One hypothesis (Raymond Rogers) is that the image could derive from an amino-carbonyl reaction between sugar residues on the cloth. This may help explain the process but not the photographic style image and the exactness of the coloring.

The image is a negative not a positive. This is similar to a photographic negative where the reflective light coming from a surface is imprinted into the photo-sensitive material. To accomplish this artistically in antiquity would require sophisticated knowledge.

The color density seen in any area of the image appears primarily to be a function of the number of colored fibers per unit area, rather than a significant difference in color density. This is a "half-tone" effect, with the central difference being the spatial encoded information that can be encoded onto a photograph of the object. This twist and the discontinuous distribution of the color on the surface are the most challenging features for science to get theirs minds around.

* (STURP members took many photomicrographs of the surface of the Shroud in 1978 (Pellicori & Evans, 1981. They reported that the image "consists of a light sepia color with the darkest coloration on the thread tops." All image areas are very faint, and most image fibers are gold (Schwalbe & Rogers, 1982)).

A very specific feature, is that the color appeared only on the surface of individual fibers (Heller and Adler, 1981). This lack of randomness or flow distribution gives the image a sense of intentional design.

The individuals commissioned to explore this article are amazed at the resolution and completeness of the image. It appears to have been created within a 200-800 nanometers thick layer sitting on the actual fiber making up the cloth.

The Shroud has been observed by visible, infrared, x-ray fluorescence and ultraviolet, spectrometry, as well as thermography. Recent observations have been made using pyrolysis mass- spectrometry and laser-microprobe Raman analyses, just to name the main methods. Ultraviolet-fluorescence photography has been one of the key instrumental methods in the discovery process.

The shaky conclusion of researchers is that each visually blended color shade (or the density of pixels) represents the distance between the cloth and the part of the body the cloth is covering at that point. This was also the conclusion of the members witnessing the original VP8 analyses in 1976. The density of pixels literally creates a sort of terrain map of the physical form enshrouded. Yet there is no directionality to the implied light of the highlights and shadows. Meaning: the brightness does not come from any angle or directional source, even several directional sources have been ruled out. This is never the case with any normal image. The angle of the light source(s) is what gives dimensionality to images. The source is not from above or below, nor from the right or the left, nor from the front. This rules out for most the photo ideas. The source of energy was not directional in any sense.

Plotting the relative lighter and darker areas seen in the images produces a three-dimensional isometric drawing of the body. This allows the body to be viewed from different angles. We can see the slope of the nose, the recesses of the eye sockets and the shape of the torso.  The conclusion is that the image is a graphic representation of the distance between any part of the body and the cloth. And or the man it enshroud at the time of creation.

The image quenches at about 3 or 4 centimeters. That means that no image is present for parts of the body that are more than about one and a half inches distance from the cloth.
Visible and ultraviolet spectrometry, infrared spectrometry, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, and direct microscopic viewing did not detect any known Medieval painting materials. Later microscopy, microchemistry, pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry, and laser-microprobe Raman analyses failed to detect foreign materials. Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry analysis was sufficiently sensitive to detect ppb levels of polyethylene oligomers that came from bags carrying the samples to the lab.

The cloth was not perfectly flat on the subject, yet the image negative produces a dimensionally actuate representation anatomically of the face and body, and all the smaller parts like fingers and feet.

The focus and exposure produce a high-resolution image that is packed with informational data. The distance and timing in relationship to the energy requires researchers to conclude intentional design. Why, well because of the extraordinary odds against getting all the parameters perfect. They are astronomical! The odds of producing the right energy, distance and timing to produce such an idealized resolution are simply mind blowing, especially in antiquity.

First, the distance could be distorted by the drape of the cloth. We can assume it was not perfectly flat. But the image is anatomically accurate.
We don’t know how linear the scale might be in the image formation process; e.g., is twice as close twice as light. We might know the linearity if we knew how the images were created, but we don’t. Also, the image is very old and we don’t know how fading of the images and the aging of the cloth might have altered the accuracy of the distance that is encoded. Finally bloodstains and dirt on the cloth prior to the “imprinting” certainly should cause distortions.
That there is a distance-encoded representation at all is amazing and puzzling. It is important to note that no imagery in the history of art or science; no other works of art, normal photograph, artifacts or relics of any kind will produce a 3D plot like the one produced from the Shroud. NO METHOD LOOKED AT AND OR TRIED, WORKS TO PRODUCE A 3D PLOT.
The Shroud image has been mapped extensively for; blood, wax, dirt, burns, wounds, locations of repairs, locations where sticky tape samples were taken , etc. The facts are clear that no pigments, paints, dyes or stains have been found. The idea of the image being a photograph or painting of some type was eliminated right away by the original 1976 VP-8 Image Analyzer images, done in 1976.

THE SUDARIUM
In the Cathedral of Oviedo in northern Spain is a linen cloth called the Sudarium Christi, or the Face Cloth of Christ.  The Cloth of Oviedo is often referred to in Shroud discussions simply as “The Sudarium”.  The Sudarium is a poor quality linen cloth, like a handkerchief, measuring 84 x 53 centimeters.  It is has bloodstains and serum stains from pulmonary edema fluid which match the blood and serum patterns and blood type of the Shroud of Turin. These stain patterns have been extensively mapped using infrared and ultraviolet photography and electron microscopy. Research completed by the Spanish Centre for Sindonology (Dr. Jose Villalain, Jaime Izquierdo and Guillermo Heras of the University of Valencia, as noted by Oviedo scholar Mark Guscin) have demonstrated that this Cloth, touched the same face as the one enshroud within the Shroud of Turin. The Oviedo Cloth was placed around the head most like while on the cross itself or shortly after it was taken down. It was used to lessen the hardship of the family of onlookers as well as protect the eyes from scavenger birds. Pollen grains found on the Sudarium match pollen grains found on the Shroud of Turin.  Dr. Uri Baruch (expert palynologist from the Israel Antiquities Authority) has indicated that one of these pollen matches is Gundelia tournefortii - a thorn/thistle bush that is indigenous to the Holy Land.  Dr. Avinoam Danin (botanist and expert on the flora of the Holy Land who teaches at Hebrew University in Jerusalem) reports that Gundelia tournefortii serves as a "geographic and calendar indicator" that the origin or provenance of the cloths is the Holy Land.
The Sudarium Christi has a well-documented history.  One source traces the cloth back as far as 570 AD.  Pelayo, Bishop of Oviedo in the 1100's, noted in his Chronicles that the Oviedo Cloth left Jerusalem in 614 AD in the face of the Persian attack of King Chosroes II, and made its way across North Africa to Spain.  It was transported to Oviedo in a silver ark (large box) along with many other sacred relics.  An excellent English book on the topic is; The Oviedo Cloth - Mark Guscin - The Luttenworth Press 1998, Cambridge, CT. ISBN 07188-2985-9.

CONCLUSION
  • Strictly from the evidence it appears that the energy for the image process came from, was very near the body surface but not directly from within the body for it reflected off the outer physical form as evident of the coins and flower images. Coins are metal and would have blocked the like energy from below.
  • Whatever event/process took place, it recorded the image of the body it was covering in negative similar to a photographic plate but with the addition of the dimensional aspects of the body, coins on the eyes and flowers around the head.
  • If the energy came directly from the body how would it imprint the metal coins covering the eyes?
  • Also, the image wold not have resulted in a negative of the enshrouded man.
  • This energy was mostly likely some uniquely coherent form of columnated radiation. Because it did the entire body front and back.
  • The source was very close to the body surface and did not radiate out more then an inch and a half from the body surface.
  • The form of radiation did not heat the surface of the Shroud because no fluorescence was detected.
  • This coherent light imprinted the physical topography of the physical. This energy transference somehow encoded the Shroud with dimensionality of the body within it, as well as beautiful resolution regardless of the distance from the body.
  • The body was positioned on its back on a hard surface, most likely a large slab of stone. The Shroud was around the body held in place by other strap like pieces of cloth. So parts the cloth was wrinkled with weight pushing down on the backside of the body, yet the image exists there too! And with clear resolution!

The evidence points to the facts that energy reflected off the body and onto the cloth but the energy had to be, cool, highly coherent and columnated.

COMMENTARY
In conclusion modern science with all its technical sophistication still does not know how the images were 'imprinted' on the Shroud, and it certainly cannot recreate anything remotely similar. The premise most researchers make when looking for a source for the chemical reaction, is to assume that a corpse in the decomposition process somehow produced the source. This is understandable since the science points on nearly all the data that the Shroud covered an actual corpse; that the forensic evidence tells us that the body most likely went into rigor mortis while on the cross after a brutal crucifixion. This is seen in the stiffness of the extremities and mapping of blood flows , etc. Yet there is not one single shred of evidence of initial decomposition of the body, no issue of fluids from the orifices, and no decline of rigor mortis leading to flattening of the back etc. are found. In short, the body appears like a body shortly after the onset of death, yet there are no signs of the next steps, which is decomposition. This is important information on many levels. Second, it has been demonstrated that the image could not have been produced by vapors and or liquids, nor heat nor pressure, even a normal reaction of the gases coming from a corpse effecting the starch layers can be ruled out due to the exactness of the distribution that forms a near perfect negative of the man enshrouded at the moment of creation.

I submit the well-documented death-like state of yogic masters. These individuals show no signs of life yet return to life after varying amounts of time. Some have remained in this death-like state for as long as a month for researchers.

Another bizarre fact that works nicely into my model is the holographic embedded information that Dr. Petres Soons discovered in 2006-07, in Holland. To embed this type, level and amount of information in a 1931 Ernie negative is literally impossible using current physics. Yet there it is.

Lastly, one of the most amazing facts about the Shroud is that it has survived this long through all it has been through. It remains a cloth with a feel as soft as your bedspread, yet it has been put through years of political intrigue, earthquakes, floods, extensive traveling throughout its long history, been handling and placed on many public expositions throughout the ages, gone through many battles and wars to countless to number, floods, several major fires and detractors.
After all this to have the image visible at all is in it self a miracle.

To say that it is rare for archeologist to find 2000 years old textiles in perfect shape is a gross understatement. To find a textile that under the use of laser technologies shows holographic tendencies and spatial characteristic of the body it enshrouded is in today’s current science a miracle.

NOTE:
SADDLY, As a footnote June 20 - 22, 2002 a very important event took place which forever removed the possibility of unbiased future research. Approval and permission had been given by the Roman Curia and Vatican for a small group of textile experts, headed by Mechtild Fleury-Lemberg of Switzerland, to perform a dramatic and radical "restoration" of the Shroud under the auspices of the Archbishop of Turin and his advisors at the Turin Center for Shroud Studies. They remove the thirty patches sewn as well as the backing cloth frequently referred to as the "Holland Cloth" that was sewn onto the back of the Shroud to strengthen after the 1532 fire.
Why they had to suddenly remove the repair pieces of cloth applied by the Poor Clare Nuns in 1534 no one would say.
They photograph the hidden back-side of the cloth and then re-attach a new, whiter linen backing cloth. Going against all proper preservation techniques they use lead weights suspended from the edges of the Shroud to "flatten" many of the creases in the cloth and then did the cardinal sin of applying steam to certain areas to help accomplish get ride of the creases. They handle the cloth without gloves or special clothing. They scrape away the charred edges of all the burned areas contaminating the rest of the cloth and to the horror of archeologist and sinologists exposed the cloth for large amounts of time, over a continuous period of thirty-two days, to significant amounts of potentially damaging light and the polluted air of Turin.
Why they perform this so called “restoration” in secret, without consulting any of the world's Shroud experts which included most of their own advisors, advise that could have contributed important scientific guidance to ensure that no valuable scientific or historical data was lost or damaged during the restoration no one knows to date.

NOTE:
1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project involving approx. 35 scientists directly examining the Shroud for 120 continuous hours determined that the image was caused by rapid dehydration, oxidation and degradation of the linen by an unidentified process. Several Physicists, including Dr. John Jackson of the Colorado Shroud Center, point to a form of possible columnated radiation as the best explanation for how the image was formed, representing a scorch-like appearance (the scorch caused by light versus heat, as the image does not fluoresce).  Dr. Thomas Phillips (nuclear physicist at Duke University and formerly with the High Energy Labs at Harvard) points to a potential miliburst of radiation (a neutron flux) that could of happened the moment of Resurrection. Such a miliburst may be a possible cause of the purely surface phenomenon of the scorch-like (scorch-by-light) images and a possible key to the addition of carbon-14 to the Cloth.  More testing can be done to ascertain whether a neutron-flux occurred.

NOTE:
Vatican researchers had uncovered evidence that the Shroud had been kept and venerated by the Templars since the 1204 sack of Constantinople.

Note:
A recent study by French scientist Thierry Castex has revealed that on the shroud are traces of words in Aramaic spelled with Hebrew letters. Barbara Frale, a Church scholar, told Vatican Radio on July 26 2009 that her own studies suggest the letters on the shroud were written more than 1,800 years ago.
The residue coating is expected from first century methods of linen manufacturing described by the historian Pliny the Elder. The warp threads on the loom were coated with starch as a lubricant. The cloth was then rinsed with soapwort to remove the starch and laid out to dry. The bleaching of hanks of yarn before weaving is also consistent with first century methods but not consistent with medieval European field bleaching of finished cloth.

Today, the shroud is stored flat in a sealed, fireproof, rare-atmosphere container with bullet proof glass in St. John the Baptist Cathedral (Duomo di San Giovanni) in Turin, Italy.
The container is covered with a cloth so that the shroud may not be viewed except during public exhibitions.
Throughout history, the shroud has been stored rolled up or folded in various reliquaries. And as mentioned earlier, there is evidence that it was once stored in an earthen jar. 
The last exhibition was in 2000. The next was moved up suddenly to April-May of 2010.



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Original Source From the Hebrew Wikipedia.

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