Galeeb info : Mummies Unlocked By CT Scanners

Mummies Unlocked By CT Scanners

The British Museum uses medical
technology to reveal secrets of the ancient
Egyptians, including their high cholesterol
levels.

Whether it is down to Hollywood blockbusters 
or Scooby Doo, our fascination with Egyptian 
mummies has lasted for more than 200 years.
Now the latest generation of CT scanners - 
normally used to check living patients - have 
been used by the British Museum, in London, 
to shed new light on one of its most popular 
collections.
The findings show we share rather more with 
the ancient Egyptians than you might expect, 
including high cholesterol levels and 
agonising toothache.
Eight of the museum's mummies have been 
virtually unwrapped - revealing secrets they 
took to the grave thousands of years ago.
An image illustrating how a mummy looks 
when being scanned 
Each long-dead individual was painstakingly 
transported to hospitals across the capital 
and placed - out of hours and late at night - 
inside the latest generation of CT scanners.
The unprecedented levels of resolution have 
shown some unexpected developments. 
They include the revelation that one of the 
mummies, found in a woman's coffin and 
believed for hundreds of years to be female, 
was in fact a man.
The first mummy entered the museum's 
collection in 1756, but for the past 200 years 
none of the mummies have been unwrapped 
because of the damage that would be done.
A mummy that lived between 3,500BC and 
700AD 
Now, cutting-edge visualisation techniques 
mean not only curators, but every visitor to 
the exhibition can peel away the wrappings 
and virtually explore what lies beneath.

All of the mummies chosen once lived in the 
Nile Valley, between 3,500BC and 700AD. 
The exhibition reveals more about how they 
lived and died and shows the embalming 
process did not always go to plan - 
particularly for one man from Thebes. 
Curator Daniel Antoine told Sky News: "Facial 
visualisation reveals a tool still stuck in his 
head.
"There had been an attempt to remove his 
brain but during it one of the tools used to 
go through the nose appears to have snapped 
and surprisingly that tool is still lodged inside 
him." 
Like all of the adult mummies, the same man 
was found to have advanced dental decay - 
with four separate abscesses in his mouth.
Another two individuals still have calcified 
plaque on their bones, suggesting they may 
have suffered from cardiovascular disease. 
Neil MacGregor, director of the British 
Museum, said: "This new technology is truly 
groundbreaking, allowing us to reconstruct 
and understand the lives of these eight very 
different individuals.
"This is a project which has only been made 
possible through recent technological 
advances."
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Monday, 19 May 2014

Mummies Unlocked By CT Scanners

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