The Shroud of Turin · Chapter 9 of 21
The crown of thorns: the wounds of the scalp
The Gospels describe soldiers who mocked Jesus after the flogging. They dressed him in a purple robe, pressed a crown of thorns onto his head, and hailed him as king. The image on the Shroud shows punctures across the scalp and blood flows that run down the forehead and the back of the head. The shape of that scalp pattern is one of the most discussed features of the cloth.
What the Gospels say
The Gospel accounts agree on the sequence. After the flogging, the soldiers took Jesus into the praetorium, gathered the whole cohort, clothed him in a purple robe, and wove a crown of thorns that they placed on his head. They put a reed in his right hand, knelt before him in mock homage, struck him on the head, and spat on him (Matthew 27:27–31; Mark 15:16–20; John 19:2–3).1 John adds that Pilate brought Jesus out wearing the crown and the robe and said, “Here is the man” (John 19:5).1
The Gospels do not describe the crown’s shape or the plant it was made from. Their accounts are short, and the reader of the Gospels has no independent description of the instrument. The shape has to be read from other evidence, chiefly the wounds themselves.
The mockery and its setting
The mockery was a parody of royal honour. A purple robe, a crown, and a reed sceptre were the marks of a king, and the soldiers gave Jesus a counterfeit set. Roman soldiers were known to mock condemned prisoners in this way, and the mockery was part of the punishment, as the scourging was. It was carried out in the presence of other soldiers and, if Pilate brought him out, in front of the crowd.
The setting is also contested, as the place of the flogging is. Many historians place the praetorium at Herod’s Palace, and the mockery is usually placed in the same courtyard.2
What the cloth shows of the head
The scalp of the figure carries about thirty distinct puncture wounds, spread across the top and sides of the head. They are not in a single ring around the brow, as a circlet would produce. They cover the calvarium, the domed upper part of the skull, in a pattern that has been described as a cap rather than a band.3 Some punctures lie on the forehead, and others on the back of the scalp.
The distribution matters because Christian art from the second century onward almost always shows the crown as a circlet worn like a wreath around the brow. The cloth does not match that convention. A cap of thorns pressed down over the head would produce the pattern the cloth shows, and that is one reason the wounds are read as evidence against the medieval artistic tradition.3
The blood flows from these wounds have been studied in detail. Forensic pathologist Robert Bucklin, who examined the cloth in 1982, documented blood flows on the forehead and the back of the scalp that he related to these punctures.3 The flow shapes are described as V-shaped rivulets on the forehead, where blood follows the facial contours, and as curved marks where blood met a crease in the brow. Bucklin also argued that some flows show a horizontal spread consistent with the head lying down, while others show the downward run expected from a man standing or sitting upright. On that reading the capillary record preserves a sequence of positions.3
The nape and the leaves
Some researchers have looked at the bloodstains at the back of the neck under visible and ultraviolet light. A 2026 study by Giulio Fanti and colleagues, as reported in the literature, found that some flows near the nape have a sharply angled profile, and that the blood appears to have been deflected by objects lodged between the scalp and the cloth. The authors reported that experiments reproduced this pattern when leaves were placed among the strands of hair.4 This suggests a crown that was leafy as well as thorny. The finding is recent and has not been independently reproduced, and it should be held as a hypothesis until it is.
Which plant?
The Gospels do not name the plant. Several thorny species grow in the region, and different researchers have proposed different candidates. The jujube Ziziphus spina-christi has been proposed because its flexible branches and hooked thorns could be woven into a band, and because it is widespread in the region. Other candidates include Rhamnus lycioides, a thorny shrub, which has been suggested for the same reason.5 Each proposal rests on the thorn geometry, the availability of the plant, and whether the wounds fit a woven crown, rather than on a recovered crown. No crown has been identified with confidence, so the botanical question remains open.
A woven cap or a circlet?
A circlet would produce wounds in a ring at the brow, with blood flowing down the forehead on each side. A woven cap would produce wounds across the calvarium, with blood running down the scalp and into the hair. The cloth shows the second pattern, and the detail that most distinguishes the two is the presence of punctures at the top and back of the head. That detail argues for a crown that was pressed down over the head, not one balanced on the brow.
The reading has limits. Scalp wounds bleed heavily, and the flow patterns are affected by hair, by the position of the head when the blood ran, and by the way the cloth was laid over the body. The conclusion that the crown was a cap should be read as the best fit of the evidence, not as an established fact.
Experimental reconstruction
Experiments with thorny branches have been used to test how punctures and blood flows might form. Some reported that thorns of the right length and curvature could produce wounds like the ones on the cloth, and that the blood follows the scalp in ways that match the marks. Other experiments have not reproduced the full pattern, and results depend on the thorn and the method. The work is informative, but it is limited by the small number of trials and by the difficulty of matching a living scalp in the laboratory.
Medical context
The scalp is richly supplied with blood vessels, and wounds there bleed heavily even when they are small. The head wounds on the cloth are consistent with that. Their effect on the wearer would have included pain, blood loss that ran into the eyes and hair, and the disorientation that follows heavy scalp bleeding. The Gospels describe the mockery but not its physical effects, and the cloth shows the outcome rather than the experience.
What the crown can and cannot show
The head wounds can show that the scalp was punctured in a pattern that fits a crown pressed onto the head, that the blood flowed in ways consistent with a head that was upright at some stages and lying at others, and that the pattern does not match the medieval circlet convention. They can show that these features are consistent with the mockery described in the Gospels.
They cannot identify the plant, establish the exact shape of the crown, or tell us what the soldiers intended beyond the mockery itself. The number of punctures is an estimate, and the details of the nape stains depend on recent work that has not yet been reproduced.
References
- Matthew 27:27–31; Mark 15:16–20; John 19:2–5. Matthew 27:27–31; Mark 15:16–20; John 19:2–5.
- Herod’s Palace and the praetorium. The identification is discussed in archaeological and biblical scholarship. Publication details to be confirmed before publication.
- Bucklin, R. (1982). The Shroud of Turin: A pathologist’s viewpoint. Legal Medicine Annual, 1982, 1–14. shroud.com/bucklin.htm
- Fanti, G., and colleagues (2026). Study of the bloodstains at the nape of the neck under visible and ultraviolet light, with leaves in the hair. Publication details to be confirmed before publication.
- Botanical proposals for the crown of thorns, including Ziziphus spina-christi and Rhamnus lycioides. Publication details to be confirmed before publication.