John H Taylor and Daniel Antoine, curators, British Museum
We may think that we know the ancient Egyptians on account of the abundance of carved and painted images and the many texts on stone and papyrus that have survived, but these sources convey a formal, partial and sanitised view; to a large degree they tell us only what the Egyptians wanted posterity to know.
The first mummy entered the Museum’s collection in 1756, and for the past 200 years none of the mummies have been unwrapped. But modern technology, in the form of the CT (computed tomography) scanner, has transformed the way that we can study them, allowing us to see within the wrappings and the mummified bodies, in a non-invasive and non-destructive manner.
We can now look behind the mask of material culture and encounter the actual people of the ancient Nile Valley through a forensic study of their…
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dorannrule
May 22, 2014 at 5:30 pm
This post ignites some long buried fascination I have always had with Egyptian mummies and the lifestyles of so long ago. How grand that the new scientific tools are able to uncover more about these things! Rita – thanks again for sharing. 🙂
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ritaroberts
May 23, 2014 at 11:41 am
Hi Dora, I too have always been fascinated by Egypt’s history and I would love to be present when a mummy was unwrapped. Thanks for reading.
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