Video: Mummy X-rays let you peel its body

You can now undress a mummy, peel away its skin and peer inside its body – virtually of course.

This video of Tamut, a priest’s daughter who lived and died in ancient Egypt in about 900 BC, uses high-definition CT scans to reveal details of her health. It shows a deep abscess in her jaw that would have been excruciatingly painful, arteries full of fatty plaque – a high risk for heart attack and stroke – and amulets on her body that indicate her high status.

Two plates are also visible on her left abdomen, placed by embalmers after an incision was made to extract, embalm and replace her internal organs. Her eye sockets have been filled with artificial eyes made of glass or stone.


The visualisation was made for a new exhibit at the British Museum in London that opens today, featuring Tamut’s embalmed body along with seven others from Egypt and Sudan.

This mummy was on the lookout for a husband (Image: Trustees of the British Museum)

A virtual peel of another mummy (see photo) – a girl of about seven years old from the same time period – reveals a thick mass of hair and a remarkably well-preserved face. The shoulder-length hair suggests she was a candidate for marriage, because younger children wore their hair in a side lock.

The exhibit, called Ancient Lives, New Discoveries, is open until November 2014.