One of the last remaining unwrapped royal Egyptian mummies has been scanned in detail for the first time.
Amenhotep I, who ruled Egypt from around 1525 to 1504 BC in an era known as the New Kingdom, was found in 1881 by a French Egyptologist. But the king’s mummy was left untouched due to a highly preserved wrapping and ornate face mask. It has remained sealed in its sarcophagus ever since.
Now, Sahar Saleem and Zahi Hawass at the University of Cairo in Egypt have “digitally unwrapped” Amenhotep I’s mummy with computed tomography (CT), using hundreds of high resolution X-ray slices to map out the ancient king’s skeleton and soft tissue.
“Royal mummies of the New Kingdom were the most well-preserved ancient bodies ever found, so these mummies are considered a time capsule,” says Saleem.
“They can tell us about what the ancient kings and queens looked like, their health, ancient diseases, mummification techniques and manufacturing methods of funerary objects.”
Amenhotep I’s mummy has been examined using simple X-ray scans in the past, but the detailed CT scan reveals several new facts: his bone structure indicates that he was 35 years old and 168.5 centimetres tall when he died.
