Egyptian giant crocodile mummy is full of surprises

Courtesy Interspectral and  Rijksmuseum van Oudheden

A three-metre-long mummified Egyptian 'giant crocodile', one of the finest animal mummies in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden), turns out to be literally filled with surprises. Examination of detailed new 3D CT scans has led to the conclusion that, besides the two crocodiles previously spotted inside the wrappings, the mummy also contains dozens of individually wrapped baby crocodiles. This is an exceptional discovery: there are only a few known crocodile mummies of this kind anywhere in the world. Starting on 18 November, museum visitors can perform a virtual autopsy on the 3,000-year-old mummy, using an interactive visualisation exhibit in the new Egyptian galleries.

Virtual autopsy in museum galleries

A new scan of the large crocodile mummy was recently performed at the Academic Medical Centre (AMC) in Amsterdam. An earlier CT scan in 1996 had shown that there are two juvenile crocodiles inside a mummy that looks like one large crocodile. The Swedish company Interspectral, which specializes in high-tech interactive 3D visualizations, has converted the results of the new scan into a spectacular 3D application and thus detected the dozens of baby crocodiles. 

Peek Inside Cat Mummies With New X-ray Images

Turns out there's more than one way to scan a cat.

By Joshua Rapp Learn

Archaeologists may soon unravel the mysteries of ancient Egypt using a new imaging technique that offers a better look inside mummies without removing a single piece of wrapping.

The new kind of CT scan has been successfully tested on cat mummies from the collections of the South Australian Museum. While the exact ages of these mummies are unknown, feline mummies were fairly common in Egypt from about 600 B.C. until A.D. 250.

Typical CT scans use a single type of x-ray to take images of an object from multiple angles and then create a digital image of the insides. Such scans can tell the difference between muscle and bone based on their relative density. But this can present challenges for mummies: As they get older, their skin and muscles dry up and become denser, while the bones lose marrow and become less dense.

The new technique, known as atomic number imaging, instead uses two kinds of x-rays to peer inside stuff and figure out the hidden composition based on a material’s atomic number—one of the defining characteristics of a chemical element. For instance, the scans can distinguish between bones filled with calcium and phosphorous and muscle, which is mostly carbon.

“It’s a technique that can be done on any CT scanner,” says lead author James Bewes, a radiology resident at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia, who describes the work in the August issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

“We can dive that little bit deeper into the makeup of what we’re imaging,” Bewes says. “We’re trying to tell how they lived and how they died through their bones and through their muscles.”

Newly Discovered Fetus Is Youngest Egyptian Mummy on Record

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | May 13, 2016

A miniature coffin discovered more than a century ago holds the remains of the youngest Egyptian ever embalmed as a mummy on record, researchers in England said.

A computed tomography (CT) scan of the coffin revealed that the coffin didn't hold mummified internal organs, as researchers had suspected, but instead contains the tiny mummy of a human fetus, according to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England. The mummified fetus was likely at only 16 to 18 weeks of gestation when it died, likely from a miscarriage, museum officials said.

"This landmark discovery … is remarkable evidence of the importance that was placed on official burial rituals in ancient Egypt, even for those lives that were lost so early on in their existence," museum researchers said in a statement.

The British School of Archaeology originally uncovered the 17-inch-long (44 centimeters) coffin in Giza in 1907, and the Fitzwilliam Museum added the coffin to the museum collection that same year. The cedarwood coffin is a perfect miniature of a regular-size coffin from Egypt's Late Period, and likely dates to about 644 B.C. to 525 B.C., museum researchers said. It even has "painstakingly small" carvings on it, the researchers added.

For years, museum curators assumed that the coffin held internal organs, which were routinely removed during the Egyptian embalming process. But curators found otherwise when they examined the coffin during preparations for the museum's bicentennial exhibition, "Death on the Nile: Uncovering the Afterlife of Ancient Egypt," which opened in February.

What they discovered in the coffin surprised them.

Unravelling the animal mummies of Ancient Egypt

Creepy exhibition reveals what lies beneath the bandages of cats, crocodiles and jackals offered to the Gods 

By Sarah Griffiths for MailOnline

From bandaged crocodiles to cats entombed in wooden effigies, a new exhibition seeks to unravel the mystery of animal mummies.

The ancient Egyptians carefully prepared the mummies in their millions as votive offerings to the gods.

Now, thousands of years after they were made, the exhibition will reveal the contents of these unusual mummies using X-rays and CT scans to the public.

The Gifts for the Gods exhibition at Manchester Museum will explain the background behind what today seems like a bizarre religious practice, in the context of life in ancient Egypt.

While many people may imaging Ancient Egypt to be a sandy wilderness, it was a country of lush grassland and a taxidermy exhibit will show what the mummified animals would have looked like when they were alive.

The strangest one to go on display is a jackal mummy which was found to contain fragments of human bone.

But Lidija McKnight, Research Associate at the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester told MailOnline: ‘The ancient Egyptians mummified just about every animal they could find from cats and dogs, to fish, crocodiles, rodents, birds and baboons.

‘Perhaps the more surprising are the mummies which don’t contain animals themselves, or which contain more than species wrapped together.’

Unraveling ancient Egypt’s animal mummy mystery

By Michael E. Miller

What do you call an ancient Egyptian animal mummy with no body inside?

A modern mystery.

Using high powered X-ray machines, British researchers have revealed secrets hidden for almost 3,000 years in the sands of the cradle of civilization. But they have also stirred debate over what those secrets mean for our understanding of ancient Egyptians and their religious beliefs.

As part of a BBC documentary scheduled to air Monday, scientists from the University of Manchester have unveiled CT scans of the insides of more than 800 ancient Egyptian animal mummies. The startling images are as fascinating for what they don’t show, however, as they are for what they do.

Roughly a third of the animal mummies examined were completely empty, Egyptologist Lidija McKnight told The Washington Post. Another third contained only partial skeletons, sometimes as little as a single bone.

“That is the most shocking to most people, that some of them don’t contain what you are expecting,” she said. “I think the more we look at them, the more that becomes sort of commonplace.”

McKnight said that many of the mummies, which date to between 1000 B.C. and 400 A.D., look similar on the outside but contain very different things inside. Two cat mummies, for instance, might look the same but whereas one would contain a complete kitty skeleton, the other would be empty.

The Controversial Afterlife of King Tut

A frenzy of conflicting scientific analyses have made the famous pharaoh more mysterious than ever

By Matthew Shaer for Smithsonian Magazine

The Valley of the Kings lies on a bend in the Nile River, a short ferry ride from Luxor. The valley proper is rocky and wildly steep, but a little farther north, the landscape gives way to gently rolling hills, and even the occasional copse of markh trees. It was here, in a humble mud-brick house, that the British Egyptologist Howard Carter was living in 1922, the year he unearthed the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun, forever enshrining both the boy king and himself in the annals of history.

These days, the house serves as a museum, restored to its nearly original state and piled high with Carter’s belongings—a typewriter, a camera, a record player, a few maps, a handful of sun hats. Toward the back of the museum is a darkroom, and out front, facing the road, is a shaded veranda.

On the September day I visited, the place was empty, except for a pair of caretakers, Eman Hagag and Mahmoud Mahmoud, and an orange kitten that was chasing its own shadow across the tiled floor. 

Most of the lights had been turned off to conserve electricity, and the holographic presentation about Carter’s discovery was broken. I asked Hagag how many visitors she saw in a day. She shrugged, and studied her hands. “Sometimes four,” she said. “Sometimes two. Sometimes none.” 

Mahmoud led me outside, through a lush garden overhung with a trellis of tangled vines, and toward the entrance of what appeared to be a nuclear fallout shelter. An exact replica of Tutankhamun’s tomb, it had opened just a few months earlier, and Mahmoud was keen to show it off.

The truth about Tutankhamun (2)

In the second of two articles, Zahi Hawass continues his explanation of the mystery of Tutankhamun

November 2014 marks 92 years since the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in Luxor. This is an occasion that could be used to promote tourism to the city where the golden king and his tomb are located. It is also be an ideal opportunity to announce that only one ticket is now needed to visit Tutankhamun’s family tombs, including those of Amenhotep II, Yuya and Tuya, and tomb KV55.

Even with the passage of time, we should never forget what the English team did to the pharaoh’s mummy in 1968. Jewellery disappeared, and pieces of the mummy were taken without permission. Only last year an English team announced, based on their examination of these stolen pieces, that the mummy of Tutankhamun had been burned.

My intention in this article, and in the article published in the Weekly last week, is to show that despite the problems that Tutankhamun had during his life, he was in good health and used to hunt wild animals. He was not disabled, contrary to what was alleged on a recent TV show.

Last week I wrote about the lies told in an English TV show about the golden king, and how a scientist had perjured himself in front of scholars all over the world. The truth about Tutankhamun is the real discovery made by the great British archaeologist Howard Carter, enabling us to discover new material about the boy king every year. The truth has been revealed by the great work of the Egyptian Mummy Project and the discovery of Tutankhamun’s family and how he died.

The truth about Tutankhamun

Recent speculation about the life of the ancient Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun can be easily disproved by the archaeological evidence, writes Zahi Hawass

Tutankamun: the Truth Revealed” is the title of a TV show produced by a private company in England for the BBC and the Smithsonian Channel in the United States. But the show reveals lies, not the truth.

It quotes scientists whose real intention is to become famous in the media, and one of them, a former member of the Egyptian mummy project, uses the Egyptian team’s CT and DNA analysis without permission to spread lies about Tutankhamun, claiming that the ancient Egyptian boy king was handicapped, born with a club foot.

This golden boy has entered the hearts of people all over the world, and this person wanted to take him out of our hearts. This person and the film producer have made a huge mistake and in so doing they have lost the respect of all reasonable people. Scholars all over the world disagree with them, and, again, instead of revealing the truth all they have done is to propagate lies.

The UK’s Daily Mail newspaper has published an article on the new documentary on Tutankhamun, produced by STV and already aired. The documentary distorts what Tutankhamun looked like: the boy king, whose treasure and tomb still fascinate people across the world, was presented in a completely fantastic way, humiliating not only the Egyptian king but also rewriting the history of the ancient world.

Egyptian scholars question incest claims in BBC King Tut documentary

By Rany Mostafa

CAIRO: Several Egyptian archaeologists have deeply questioned the results of recent research that has attributed the death of Egypt’s Pharaoh Tutankhamen to a genetic disorder.

Last week, researchers at the Institute for Mummies and Icemen in Italy issued a report suggesting the parents of Tutankhamen were brother and sister, from whom he inherited genetic impairments that caused his premature death at the age of 19.

Renowned archaeologist Zahi Hawass, as quoted by Al-Ahram Sunday, fiercely described the result as “slander” aimed at “distorting the fame of Egypt’s most famous pharaoh.”

Tutankhamen’s parentage is a historical debate, and Hawass said the assumptions claiming his parents were related are nothing but “medical conclusions that lack historical evidence.”

“The report is a media stunt aimed at acquiring fame at the expense of Tutankhamen,” he added.

The report is based on a virtual autopsy that created a full size computer-generated image of Tutankhamen by using 2,000 computerized tomography (CT) scans of the pharaoh’s mummified body, according to the Daily Mail.

The report includes images portraying Tutankhamen with girlish hips, a club foot and buck teeth. It also suggests that Queen Nefertiti—Tutankhamen’s mother—was the sister of his father, Pharaoh Akhenaton.

King Tut's Health: New Mummy Scans Refute Old Diagnosis of Pharaohs

by Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor   |   October 21, 2014 

The royalty of ancient Egypt suffered from an age-related back disorder, according to a new body scan of the mummies of pharaohs.

The new research clears up a long-standing mummy misdiagnosis, which held that some rulers who lived between about 1492 B.C. and 1153 B.C. had a painful inflammatory disorder called ankylosing spondylitis. This disease would have fused their vertebrae together starting from an early age.

"We are now questioning the reality that ankylosing spondylitis is actually an ancient disease," said study researcher Sahar Saleem of the Kasr Al Ainy Faculty of Medicine in Cairo. Whether it is an ancient disease or not, the altered diagnosis suggests that famed pharaohs, including Ramesses the Great, did not live out their final years in great pain. Instead, their disorder was likely asymptomatic, Saleem told Live Science.

Pharaoh's backbone

The mummies of the 18th, 19th and 20th Dynasties of ancient Egypt are incredibly well-preserved. These were the gilded times of such rulers as the 18th-dynasty boy king Tutankhamun, whose ornate burial mask is a universal symbol of ancient Egypt, and the 19th-dynasty pharaoh Ramesses II, also called "the Great" because of his military success and soaring monuments.

Unravelled after 3,000 years, the secrets of the singing mummy

By Fiona Macrae

Her body has lain undisturbed for almost 3,000 years.

Now, thanks to modern technology, the secrets of Tamut’s life are being unwrapped without upsetting her peace.

Using a CT scanner in London hospitals, experts from the British Museum peered through the intricately decorated burial case and the multiple layers of linen bandages to the person hidden inside.

The electronic excavation showed Tamut to have received the most lavish level of mummification, with amulets and other mystical jewels buried with her. 

These include artificial eyes, to allow her to see in the afterlife, thin plates of gold or another precious metal on her finger and toe nails and metal plates designed to magically heal the wounds left by the embalmer.

Some of the amulets were placed on her body – others were put inside, beside her vital organs.

Her hair was short, likely because she wore a wig, and examination of her pelvis suggests she was at least 35 when she died. The cause of death is unknown – but the scans provide a tantalising clue.

They show a large part of the femoral artery in her upper thigh to be clogged with fat, a piece of which could have broken off and triggered a heart attack or a stroke.

The digital unwrapping of the Egyptian priest Neswaiu

By Neil Bowdler

In the 19th century and even later, there was no shortage of people eager to watch the unwrapping of an Egyptian mummy.

In 1908 in Manchester, some 500 people gathered in a lecture theatre to see prominent Egyptologist Margaret Murray supervise the unwrapping of a body from the Tomb of the Two Brothers from Manchester Museum's mummy collection.

As Egyptology and archaeology evolved, the destructive practise came to an end, but it didn't mean researchers and the public were any less curious about what lies within a mummy.

Now 21st Century technology is being used to virtually unwrap mummies without causing any damage to the body and wrappings.

Museums around the world, including the very same Manchester Museum, have been sending their mummies to hospitals to undergo computed tomography (CT) scanning, creating density maps of their insides for researchers to analyse.

And now comes a chance for the public to digitally unwrap a mummified body themselves.

Mummies and the Tale of the Clogged Arteries, an Update

Published: Jan 3, 2014 | Updated: Jan 5, 2014

By Todd Neale, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Looking for atherosclerosis in mummies brings the thrill of scientific discovery, but getting access to the "patients" can prove difficult.

In the Horus study, an international group of researchers performs whole-body CT scans on mummies, looking for evidence of arterial calcification. The study was inspired by a trip to the Egyptian National Museum of Antiquities in Cairo, where a descriptive plate claims one of the pharaohs died of atherosclerosis.

But permission to image mummies isn't always easy to come by because of political issues, according to one of the principal investigators of the study, Gregory Thomas, MD, MPH, medical director of the MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in California.

So far, the team has reported results from a total of 137 mummies up to 4,000 years old from four ancient populations of Egyptians, Peruvians, Ancestral Puebloans of the U.S. Southwest, and Unangans from the Aleutian Islands (present-day Alaska). Scans revealed high rates of calcification.

King Tut Death by Chariot? Not So Fast

by Rossella Lorenzi

King Tutankhamun’s death is a mystery which may never be solved, says a new study on the best-known pharaoh of ancient Egypt.

The study indirectly dismisses a recent theory which ascribed King Tut's demise to a horrific chariot accident. According to the claim, which was detailed on Sunday in a new British documentary, the high-speed chariot crash would have smashed the boy king's rib cage and many of his internal organs, including his heart.

"It is not the first time that this mode of death has been mentioned," Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo, told Discovery News.

"I wonder how could they say his internal organs were crushed. We won't know until the canopic jars housing his organs are examined," she said.

Frank Rühli, Head of the Centre for Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, agreed.

"Moreover, the mechanism of explanation for the accident is not fully provable," Rühli told Discovery News.

According to the researchers, the diagnosis of trauma caused by a chariot accident is one of the many hypothesis about King Tut's death for which not enough evidence can be found.

How Studying Mummies Could Cure Modern Diseases

By comparing diseases from then and now, researchers can learn how they spread. Maybe they can learn how to stop them, too.

By Roxanne Khamsi

Earlier this year, scientists published a study of whole-body CT scans of 137 mummies: ancient Egyptians and Peruvians, ancestral Puebloans of southwest America, and Unangan hunter-gatherers of the Aleutian Islands. They reported signs of athero­sclerosis—a dangerous artery hardening that can lead to heart attacks or stroke—in 34 percent of them. What struck the research team, led by Randall Thompson of Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, was that it afflicted mummies from every group. Frank Rühli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project at the University of Zurich, also sees the condition in about 30 to 50 percent of the adult specimens he studies. The breadth of these findings suggests that atherosclerosis today may have less to do with modern excesses such as overeating and more with underlying genetic factors that seem present in a certain percentage of humans living almost anywhere in the world. Someday, identifying those genes could lead to new drugs for heart disease.

Ancient mummies can provide a wealth of information about the health of early civilizations, which may help us better treat diseases today. But because mummies are both rare and delicate, researchers have been limited in what they could do to them—and therefore what they could learn from them. Recent improvements of two medical tools—DNA sequencing, which can reveal microbial infections, and CT scanning—are letting paleopathologists diagnose mummies' causes of death in detail. They're now finding signs of everything from prostate cancer to malaria in mummies across the globe. By comparing the ancient forms of those diseases with their contemporary equivalents, researchers can learn how those diseases evolved, what makes them so harmful, and—possibly—how to stop them.