[guide.chat] news egyptian mummy scanned in scanner
- From: vanessa <qwerty1234567a@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "GUIDE CHAT" <guide.chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 00:01:41 +0100
Hello mummy: Student uncovers the 3,000 year old secrets of seven Egyptian
artefacts (after persuading the British Museum to let her put them in a
hospital scanner)PUBLISHED: 11:50, 1 August 2012 | UPDATED: 18:59, 1 August 2012
The patient?s age is 3,000 and as for its medical history, well that is quite
literally shrouded in mystery.
This is an ancient Egyptian mummy having a CT scan to try and unlock the
secrets of their civilisation.
It is not quite what their followers intended when they were lovingly preserved
for whatever may await them in the next life.
Inside look: A mummy from the British Museum after being scanned at Manchester
Royal Infirmary
But Egyptologist Dr Abeer Helmi says the latest x-ray techniques can provide
remarkably clear pictures of the historical treasures which lie inside the
casks, without opening them up.
One mummy is a priestess from southern Egypt, who was buried with 11 solid gold
amulets, a sign of her wealthy family and high social status.
Another was a 12-year-old girl, and the rest were adult men up to age of 50
buried with an array of gifts provided by their grieving families.
Dr Helmi, of Manchester University, tested seven priceless ancient mummies from
the British Museum in London.
They were carefully taken on a 200-mile journey to the Manchester Royal
Infirmary to be put under the scanner normally used for patients.
The information provided gives experts a remarkable insight into their health,
behaviour and economic and social history around the year 900 BC.
She said: ?I wanted to test mummies from this particular period as the
Egyptians were trying out some new mummification techniques, which were very,
very different from what had gone before.
?They had been mummifying bodies for thousands of years and refining it all the
time.
'But they wanted these to be the best, and for them to look in death as close
to how they looked in life by keeping the internal organs inside the body, in
packages, and putting stones where they eyes were to make them look lifelike.
?What they are buried with, and even the materials of the bandages and the case
tell us about their family, and what materials they had available at the time.?
The casket of one of the Egyptian mummies as it is just about to enter the
scanner
The hospital has been x-raying Egyptian mummies for research for 30 years, but
advances in CT scanning ? a revolving x-ray which creates three dimensional
images on a computer ? can show remarkable detail.
Dr Helmi said CT scanning is the only way to find out the intricate details,
because the mummies? casks often do not reveal whether they were adult or
child, male or female.
?We were able to x-ray slices just 0.6mm thick and took thousands of them to
create the pictures. Five years ago the images would have been 10mm thick and
the quality was not nearly as good?, she said.
Experts are fascinated by what sort of illnesses the mummies suffered and
whether they bear any relation to those we have today.
One of the British Museum mummies being scanned by Manchester University PhD
student Abeer Helmi at Manchester Royal Infirmary.
Two out of the seven were found to be anaemic and all but the youngest one of
them had serious dental problems because the bread they ate was full of sand
which eroded the tooth enamel.
The Egyptians mummified bodies from as far back as 3500BC right up to the
Christian era, removing the brain and other organs before preserving them in
resin and wrapping them in bandages to stop the bones decaying.
Abeer Helmi, the student who persuaded curators at the British Museum in London
to loan out the priceless artefacts for her research project.
Judith Adams, a consultant radiologist at the hospital who helped Abeer with
her work said: ?It?s something of a change from our normal patients.
'We?re able to look at the bodies from a medical point of view and give our
opinion on how these people lived and their health in general.?
A mummy from the British Museum being scanned by Manchester University PhD
student Abeer Helmi at Manchester Royal Infirmary
John Taylor, Curator of the Ancient Egypt and Sudan department of the British
Museum said: ?We were delighted to collaborate on this project; by being able
to use state of the art scanning equipment, we were able to see the artefacts
contained within the bandages much more clearly, as well as help us to age the
mummies more accurately.'
Saving face: The ornamental painted exterior of one of the caskets scanned as
part of the experiment
Earlier this year the faces of ancient Egyptians went on show in Manchester.
The portraits painted on to panels that covered the heads of mummies form part
of an exhibition at the city's John Rylands Library.
The panels, which have rarely been shown in public, were bequeathed to
Manchester Museum by cotton magnate Jesse Haworth in 1921.
The museum's Egyptology curator Campbell Price said they depicted people who
looked 'strikingly modern'.
A full body scan of one of the British Museum's mummies
The scans also revealed the metal trinkets placed inside the caskets.
The scans were able to reveal the exact location of bones within the casket
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