Wrapped in bandages and caricatured in the British Museum Hospital scans has helped the British Museum discover the secrets Egyptians took to their grave, including one woman’s intimate tattoo, Daily Telegraph reported on Sunday. Wrapped in bandages and caricatured as figures of terror in Hollywood movies, Egypt’s mummies have long captivated and bewildered scientists and children alike.
Now a new exhibition at the British Museum will disclose the human side of the mummies of the Nile.
Eight have been – scientifically speaking – stripped bare revealing secrets taken to the grave thousands of years ago.
Subjecting the corpses to the most advanced scientific techniques, including sending the mummies to hospitals around London for CAT scans – the museum’s Egyptologists have been able to build up the most detailed picture yet of what lies beneath the sarcophagi and bandage-wrapped bodies.
The oldest of the mummies to undergo scientific testing is more than 5,500 years old and dates back to 3,500 BC. The most recent example is a female aged between 20 and 35, who lived about 1,300 years ago.
Over the course of several months, the mummies were taken at night to hospitals and subjected to scans normally reserved for living patients.
Source: MENA