The British Museum and BMI Hospital recently joined forces to help unlock the secrets of six ancient mummies ranging in age from 800 to over 2,000 years. The mummies, which are part of The British Museum’s permanent collection, underwent CT scans to help peel back their bandages and reveal how, when alive, these people ate, lived, worked and ultimately died… on the day one of the biggest surprises came from [name mummy] who was thought to be headless. The CT scan revealed that the head was attached but tucked forward into the chest…an unparalleled opportunity to source scientific data that will help us shed light on the physical anthropology, family relationships, life expectancy, nutrition, health, disease and the causes of death of these mummies. The surprises on the day, such as the revelation that our headless mummy has a head allowed us to answer a lot of questions. The revelations and surprises will continue however as we now to take these images away and continue our research and further assessments that will allow us to dramatically improve our understanding about how these people lived and died. Advanced medical imaging and technology has dramatically improved the diagnostic capabilities in modern medicine and as a side effect improved the scientists look at ancient artefacts. For many years, the only way to extract data from Egyptian mummies was to unwrap them, a destructive and irreversible process. However with recent advances in the field of medical imaging non-invasive imaging techniques such as CT scans has made it possible to look inside a mummy without disturbing the wrappings in any way. With the data from the scans, The British Museum team was instantly able to virtually unwrap a mummy and embark on a 3D journey within the body, visualising every feature and secret hidden beneath the bandages and skin.
“In @BMI Spring2012”
Marques F.
CT Radiographer
