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SCIENCETuesday 15 September 2015
Exhibit’s CT-scanned mummies give new look at old world
JOHN ROGERS Alexis Hyde, right, looks at an interactive display of a CT scan from a Peruvian mummy of a wom- age 2, who was buried with
Associated Press an with two children at Natural History Museum, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2015, in Los Angeles. several figurines, including
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ever one experts believe was a
wonder what’s really un- Associated Press favorite toy. It resembles a
derneath that 5,000-year- gingerbread man.
old mummy’s elaborate They can even manipu- Chicago’s Field Museum, clothes and skin, reveal- From Egypt, there’s a teen-
wrapping? There will be age boy named Minirdis,
a rare chance to find out late the computer scans where Brown is the conser- ing that not every mum- according to the inscrip-
when “Mummies: New tion on his coffin, who was
Secrets From the Tombs” so the mummy images ap- vator. my from the ancient world believed destined to be a
opens Sept. 18 at Los An- priest like his father before
geles’ Natural History Mu- pear almost 3-D. They’ll be on display in Los led the luxurious life the he died 2,500 years ago.
seum. To display all this, the muse-
Exhibition organizers didn’t “Look, you can see her Angeles until Jan. 18 before Gilded Lady had. um has divided its recently
actually cut open any of renovated ground-floor
the nearly two dozen spec- curls, you can see her do,” moving on to exhibitions One from Peru’s Pacific exhibition space into two
imens from South America tomb-like sections repre-
and Egypt going on dis- the curator said excitedly in Denver and other cities coast, a woman in her late senting ancient Egypt and
play. (Well, except for one Peru. That was done to set
they needed to repair after as a scan of a 40-some- and then returning to the 20s, appears in her scan to off both the similarities and
someone who opened it differences of the cultures
more than a hundred years thing woman from Egypt’s Field Museum where they be in her 80s or 90s. She’s that were a world apart.
ago damaged it signifi- In ancient South America,
cantly. They’ve left it open Roman era came to life. are part of the largest col- lost all but two of her teeth, for example, mummifica-
as an example of how not tion was the standard burial
to handle a mummy.) Clearly visible under the lection of mummies in the suffers from painful arthritis technique, with entire fami-
They gave each of the oth- lies often laid to rest as one.
ers a full-body CT scan to elaborate headdress her United States. of the spine and has hard- Peruvian people of mod-
discover just what is under est means took tools like
that fancy cloth stitching. coffin’s top had been Accompanying them ened arteries. fishing nets and sewing kits
What they found, among to the grave with them so
many other things, were molded to match was a are several animal mum- “This is telling you something they could keep toiling in
the popular hairstyles of the the afterlife. Because it was
day, the clothes people mop of short-cropped, mies that were buried with about what a toll working in expected to be hard work,
who lived 2,000 to 5,000 their survivors often brought
years ago preferred to be curly hair that looked like them, including a baboon an agrarian society took on them large containers of
buried in and the jewelry beer. All of that is on dis-
they took to their graves it might have just recently and a crocodile. There are you,” said Brown. play, although the contain-
with them. ers are empty.
“The latter period is more been styled. also pieces of sarcopha- It wasn’t easy on children In Egypt, on the other hand,
heavy on the bling,” getting mummified was an
quipped exhibition curator The Gilded Lady, as she’s gus, the large, stone burial either. expensive deal that only
JP Brown, pulling up images the wealthy could afford.
of a couple of 2,000-year- known, hasn’t been seen tombs they were found in, Another mummy is that of That’s reflected, Brown
old, gilded, decked- said, in the elaborate trea-
out mummies on his tablet. in public since the Chi- 3-D molds of their bones, a Peruvian infant buried sures people accumulated
Museum visitors can do the throughout their lives just
same on large table-top cago World’s Fair of 1893. skulls and even toys. with its mother after both so they could take them to
computers being placed the grave with them.q
alongside the mummies. Nor have most of the oth- Those scans not only look apparently perished dur-
er mummies that recently below the wrappings but ing childbirth. Still another
accompanied her from even below the mummies’ is a Peruvian child, about
