Technology reveals details of thousand-year-old mummies

The British Museum will unveil eight mummies from ancient Egypt and Sudan through high technology to visitors in London from Thursday on. At this new exhibition named Ancient Lives New Discoveries, the British Museum will display the bodies of the eight people who have been preserved naturally or by deliberate embalming, however, after scanned by the advanced CT scanner. The exhibition will unlock hidden secrets of those people, as well as people's lives about 4,000 years ago that have never been revealed before. "Those CT scans have been specially processed to produce amazing 3D images of the mummies what's inside them. So we can learn about how old these people were, what were their state of health, how were they mummified. Lots of interesting questions which we do not get much information from written sources will be solved through the technology," said John Taylor, curator of Ancient Egypt and Sudan. The eight mummies on this exhibition were selected from different places in Egypt and Sudan. They were from all walks of life and at different ages with different genders, including two children, a temple singer and a doorkeeper. Through the unprecedented innovation, scientists gained some unexpected developments. One mummy, which is found in a woman's coffin and generally believed for hundreds of years to be female, was proved a man through latest CT scanners, while a spatula was found inside the skull of a female mummy, which was believed belonging to ancient Egyptian embalmers. "I think the exhibition provides more of an insight and a powerful image for visitors to be able to stare at the face of someone who is several thousand years old, and realise that they are similar to how we look today. Despite several thousand years have passed since these people died, they were still part of a living community and part of a family. It provides a powerful and moving image to be able to look at people from the distant past," said Daniel Antoine,curator of Physical Anthropology. The mummies exhibition will open to public from May 22 to Nov. 30.