RESEARCH General History

MUMMY STUDIES
High-tech examination of mummy detailed in new book

Andrea Lynn, Humanities & Social Sciences Editor
(217) 333-2177; a-lynn@uiuc.edu

3/1/03

Photo by Bill Wiegand In the early 1990s, a team of University of Illinois researchers conducted a "virtual" autopsy on an Egyptian mummy that had just been acquired by a campus museum. In a new book, archaeologist Sarah Wisseman details that work.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Now there was an autopsy – one even the clever medical examiners of "CSI," television’s prime-time hit show, haven’t yet attempted.

In the early 1990s, a team of University of Illinois researchers conducted a "virtual" autopsy on an Egyptian mummy that had just been acquired by a campus museum. The researchers opted to keep the mummy intact, to not unwrap or disturb it. Nevertheless, those same researchers were able to discover a great deal about the person who was bound for eternity – about both its life and its death.

As explained in a new book, "The Virtual Mummy" (University of Illinois Press), every tool in the trade of non-invasive non-destructive exploration circa 1991 was used: X-ray radiography and CT scanning, 3-D imaging and reconstruction, and bone, DNA, insect, resin, teeth and wood analysis. It also was the first time a supercomputer was used for "volumetric rendering" of a mummy’s head and torso.

Sarah Wisseman, an archaeologist and director of the university’s Program on Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials, was one of the lead researchers on the mummy project and is the author of the new book, which offers the first complete account of the project.

Reading like a mystery novel and written in layman’s terms, the book includes chapters on preparation for the afterlife, physical remains and embalming methods and the future of mummy studies. "The Virtual Mummy" also is richly illustrated with 23 drawings and nine color plates, including a multi-staged reconstruction of the mummy’s head and face.

The mummy came from the Fayum, a fertile area southwest of the Nile River delta. Its gender could not be determined, but it was determined to be a 7- to 9-year-old child who had several fractures of the lower skull and ribs, "probably acquired after death," Wisseman writes. Its internal organs were intact but beetles had attacked them. A cedar board was wrapped up with the body.

It is not known how the child died, but it is clear that once the embalmers began their treatment – which may have been delayed for some time, perhaps as a result of an epidemic – they took special care of the body. He or she probably lived around A.D. 100, was of mixed race and came from "a good family – one with the financial means to afford one of the better mummies of the Roman period."

The child was embalmed with a pine pitch resin and wrapped in two layers of linen and a third outer layer of ramie. A face portrait inserted into the wrappings shows a youth with dark curly hair crowned with a gold laurel wreath; the details of the eyes, nose and lips are indeterminate.

Rapidly advancing technology – including X-rays, CT scans, computer software and Web-based databases – is vastly improving mummy studies, Wisseman said. "When Egyptian mummy X-rays and CT scans are digitized and made available to researchers all over the world, it will be much easier to explore the full range of variation in mummification practices over time."