On Friday, two mummies from the Milwaukee Public Museum received state-of-the art computerized tomography, or CT, scans at GE Healthcare in Waukesha.
The scans will produce three-dimensional images of the mummies that will help uncover how these ancient Egyptians lived and died.
Researchers also will be able to visualize what the mummies looked like when they were alive and build sculptures of their faces.
Carter Lupton, an archaeologist and vice president of museum programs, will analyze the images over the next few weeks. Because the mummies have been scanned before, he has a general idea of what he'll find. But, he said, advances in technology will provide clearer pictures.
For instance, previous scans have shown loose debris and bone inside one of the mummies. Lupton hopes that 3D imaging will provide a better idea of what these pieces are.
The scans are part of a larger effort by the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium to gather images of mummies collected from the Akhmim site in Egypt. The Milwaukee Public Museum is one of the founding members of the consortium, and Lupton is its associate director.
Although not well-known today, Akhmim was an important city in Egypt in ancient times. Hundreds of mummies have been excavated from Akhmim, more than from any other site. So many were found there, in fact, that in the late 1800s the Cairo Museum began selling the mummies. Adolph and Ferdinand Meinecke purchased two mummies, named Djed-Hor and Padi-Heru, in this manner in 1887 and later donated them to the Milwaukee museum.
Akhmim mummies are now spread across the United States and the world.
"This population dispersed before we had a chance to study it," Lupton said.
He and Jonathan Elias, director of the Akhmim consortium, have been scanning Akhmim mummies in the U.S. and Cairo since 2001 in an effort to collect information about the population. Including the two scans in Milwaukee, they have already scanned over a dozen mummies. The images from these scans are archived in Harrisburg, Pa., where the consortium is based.
Because the Akhmim mummies are from the same place and lived during roughly the same time period, the archive will allow researchers to see patterns in the health and mummification techniques of these people. Researchers also will be able to tell what the population looked like.
The CT scans took 15 minutes apiece and scanned the mummies from their heads to their ankles. Each mummy was scanned twice. The first scan used a configuration set by Lupton and Elias to match their previous scans. The second scan was ordered by GE to test a new feature of its CT scanner that isn't available on the market yet. This feature helps to differentiate between soft tissue and bone, according to Ron Lundgren, systems engineer at GE.
Slices of ancient life
During the scan, X-ray cameras rotated around the mummy, taking snapshots. In each rotation, images from 64 cross-sectional "slices" of the mummy were captured. Each slice is thinner than a credit card. A 3-D workstation assembles the images; then Lupton and others can turn the images to see the mummy from different angles. They can even strip away the flesh of the mummy in the images to reveal its skeleton.
To see what the mummies once looked like, researchers take a scan of the head and take away the flesh to get an image of the skull. Working with the University of Manitoba, a three-dimensional copy of the skull is created out of plaster. Forensic sculptor Frank Bener models clay on the skull to reconstruct the face.
Lupton oversaw the scanning of the mummies in 1986, when both mummies were scanned at GE but 3-D technology was not available. These first scans took more than 10 hours to complete and produced 200 images a mummy.
Friday's scans produced three to four times as many images in a fraction of the time.
Djed-Hor was scanned a second time at GE in 1999. This scan produced 3-D images, but the technology allowed for only eight cross-sectional images per rotation, rather than 64.
Djed-Hor dates to approximately 600 B.C., and Padi-Heru dates to roughly 200 B.C. to 100 B.C. The mummies have been dated based on the style of their coffins. Their names were found in hieroglyphic inscriptions painted on the wood coffins.
The mummies are part of the "Temples, Tells and Tombs" exhibit at the museum. The exhibit is scheduled to reopen to the public July 1. |
