I have been posting comments at Evangelical Textual Criticism for the last 24 hours trying to get to the bottom of whether this article is a fake. It might well be. Anything is possible. But I was surprised to learn how rich of a heritage the New Orleans Academy of Sciences has had. I am sure I will annoy the people over there if I keep posting my research at their blog. So I have decided to keep a record over here. The article cited by Depuydt makes a number of surprising claims - most notably that an untranslated Egyptian text was copied and prominently displayed in the offices of New Orleans Academy of Sciences. The text was authored by a "Dr R S Walker" whom I have yet to find any trace of. Nevertheless I have tracked down at least one of the names scribbled on to the photocopied text used by Depuydt - Joseph S Copes, the President of the Academy.
Here is what I learned today. The Academy still exists. There also seems to be a New Orleans Academy of Sciences Collection at the Louisiana State Museum Historical Center.
Stephan Huller has had a life long interest in religion and spirituality 
dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."