Hidden secrets of Egyptian mummies are revealed
The hidden secrets of Egyptian mummies up to 3,000-years-old have been virtually unwrapped and reconstructed for the first time using cutting-edge scanning technology.
Three-dimensional images of six mummies aged between 900 BC and 140-180 AD from ancient Egypt have been held at the British Museum but never physically unwrapped.
Now the scans give an insight into what it was like to live along the Nile river thousands of years ago.
‘We are revealing details of all their physical remains as well as the embalming material used by the embalmers like never before,’ the British Museum’s physical anthropology curator Daniel Antoine said, at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney on Thursday.
‘What we are showing to the public is brand-new discoveries of their insides.’
Two of the travelling mummies were previously exhibited at the British Museum in 2014, with the other four being revealed to the world for the first time in the Sydney show that opens on Saturday.
A dual-energy computed tomography (CT) scanner at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London was used to obtain thousands of slices of images of the mummies.
Then, volumetric software was harnessed to create 3D models, Antoine said.
Only a handful of these machines are in operation around the world.
It effectively allows visitors to virtually peel back the layers of history through interactive 3D visualisations of the CT scans.
‘I’ve been able to image the arteries of the mummies, the ones that have been left, and I’m able to look at whether they are suffering from diseases which many people are suffering from today, (such as) cardiovascular diseases,’ Antoine added.
He believes the mummies can be rescanned in a decade’s time using the latest technology to find out more about their state of health, what diseases they were suffering from and the nature of their deaths.
‘We hope in the future to image the soft tissues at the cellular level to look at whether there’s any changes or to find evidence, for example, of cardiovascular diseases but also things like cancer.’
The scans found that one of mummies, Tamut, a priest’s daughter from about 900 BC, had plaque in her arteries.
Three-dimensional printing was also used to recreate amulets found during scans of her mummified remains.
The earliest evidence of mummification in Egypt suggests the practice of wrapping bodies to preserve them after death dates back as far as 4,500 BC.
The mummies are due to travel to Asia next year.
Last month, a pair of dismembered legs uncovered in an Egyptian tomb finally gave up their secrets.
First found during excavations in the Valley of Queens more than a century ago, the mummified limbs have lain in a museum in Turin ever since.
But last month, archaeologists analysing the 3,000-yearold remains said they could belong to Queen Nefertari, a royal wife of Pharaoh Ramesses the Great.
In 1904, Italian archaeologists excavated the tomb of Queen Nefertari – thought to be the favourite wife of Ramesses II, the empire’s most powerful pharaoh – finding only remains left by looters.
Among the ruins of the plundered tomb, they recovered three sections of mummified legs which were thought to belong to Nerfertari.
But analysis carried out by an international team, including researchers from the University of York, used modern scientific techniques to confirm the identity of the legs.
The researchers found the legs belong to a middle-aged to older woman who was around 5 feet 5 inches (165cm) tall and may have had arthritis.
They believe the person was between 40 and 60 when they died - the same age range as Nefertari.