The mummy of Amenhotep I, who ruled Egypt from 1525 to 1504 BC, has never been opened, but we can now see inside with the help of a CT Scan.
Humans on December 28, 2021.
Alex Wilkins
The mummy of pharaoh Amenhotep I has a face mask on.
S. Saleem and Z. Hawass are related.
One of the last royal Egyptian mummies has been scanned for the first time.
A French Egyptologist discovered Amenhotep I, who ruled Egypt from 1525 to 1504 BC, in the year 1884. The king's mummy was left untouched because of the ornate face mask. It has been sealed up ever since.
The mummy of Amenhotep I, the ancient king, has been digitally unwrapped by the University of Cairo in Egypt.
The mummies of the New Kingdom were the most well-preserved ancient bodies ever found, so they are considered a time capsule.
They can tell us about ancient diseases, mummification techniques and manufacturing methods of funerary objects.
The mummy of Amenhotep I has been examined using simple X-ray scans in the past, but the detailedCT scans reveal that he was 35 years old when he died, and 168.5 centimetres tall.
The skull of the pharaoh. The mummy shows his skull and skeleton within the bandages.
S. Saleem and Z. Nuwass.
The study seems to answer a long-standing mystery, that Amenhotep I had been embalmed by Egyptian priests for a second time 300 years after he was first entombed, after graverobbers apparently plundered his coffin. Saleem claimed that the priests used this occasion to steal jewels placed on the body and bandages for themselves before re-embalming him.
Saleem said that the priests re-embalmed Amenhotep I because of the abundance of jewellery revealed in the scans. The 19th century archaeologists were convinced to leave the mummy unwrapped because of the priests' work, which was so impressive.
The journal is called Frontiers in Medicine.
What technology tells us about mummies?
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