Tournier, Ivan
Ivan Tournier was regular contributor to the French journal Atlantis. In the Feb/Mar 1950 edition of Egerton Sykes’ Atlantean Research an English translation of an article of his entitled ‘The Orichalcum of the Atlanteans’ was published. In it he claims that orichalcum as described by Plato appears to be a specific metal rather than an alloy. However, he goes on to suggest that orichalcum or ‘mountain copper’ may have been an alloy of copper and beryllium. Tournier’s conclusion seems to have been influenced by the discovery in 1936 at Assuit in Upper Egypt of a type of scalpel made from such an alloy.
Assuit (Asyut) was the location of alleged appearances of the Virgin Mary at the Church of St.Mark in 2000 and 2001(a).