Field Museum uses CT scans on mummies to see inside them for first time
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Just in time for Halloween, scientists at the Field Museum of Natural History are peeling back the wrappings of several Egyptian mummies—without disrupting their eternal slumber.
The date notwithstanding, the scientists, of course, are not doing this for Halloween. They're doing it for anthropological research that could teach us all about how people lived more than three millennia ago.
The museum scientists are using CT scans and X-rays to analyze the remains.
"This is a really great way for us to look at who these people were," said Stacy Drake, Human Remains Collection Manager at the Field Museum, "not just the stuff that they made and the stories that we have concocted about them, but the actual individuals that were living at this time."
In a four-day study, 26 mummified corpses were put through a mobile CT scanner parked outside the Field Museum. The scans created thousands upon thousands of X-rays, which are digitally stacked to examine what is inside them.
The museum said the mummies have been part of its collection for several years.
Among the mummies the scientists studied is Lady Chenet-aa, who lived during the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt in the 22nd Dynasty—3,000 years ago. The scans have determined that she was in her late 30s or early 40s when she died.
The scans also showed the loss of several teeth and significant wear and tear on the remaining ones—indicating that the food she ate included stray grains that were tough on tooth enamel. The scan further showed Lady Chenet-aa had artificial "eyes" in her eye sockets to take with her to the afterlife.
"The Ancient Egyptian view of the afterlife is similar to our ideas about retirement savings. It's something you prepare for, put money aside for all the way through your life, and hope you've got enough at the end to really enjoy yourself," said JP Brown, Senior Conservator of Anthropology at the Field Museum, said in a news release. "The additions are very literal. If you want eyes, then there needs to be physical eyes, or at least some physical allusion to eyes."
Researchers had also been puzzled about Chenet-aa's cartonnage, the papier-mâché-like funerary box that contains her embalmed body. It has no visible seam and only a small opening at her feet—leaving questions about how in the world her corpse was placed inside.
The CT scans displayed the underside of the cartonnage for the first time, and displayed a seam there. Rather than building cartonnage around Chenet-aa's body, the mummy was stood upright and the cartonnage was softened by humidity so that it molded itself around the corpse , the museum said.
A slit was then cut from head to foot, and the cartonnage was lowered around the wrapped body and closed. A wooden panel was placed at the feet and pegged to hold everything together, the museum said.