Scan reveals child mummy is a boy

A CT scan of the child mummy's head.

A 2000-year-old Egyptian mummy from the Nicholson Museum underwent a state-of-the-art CT scan yesterday to detect what ancient secrets are beneath its wrappings.

Using cutting-edge CT-scanning technology of Sydney Central Imaging at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, the scan produced a clear and detailed 3-D colour image of the mummy that gave indisputable information about the sex of the mummy, how old he or she was when they died, the techniques of mummification, and whether or not he of she was buried with any other treasures.

"This is the first time this latest CT technology has been used on any of our mummies and we're incredibly excited about it," said Michael Turner, senior curator of the Nicholson Museum (which holds the largest collection of Egyptian artefacts in the Southern hemisphere).

A full body scan of the mummy known as Horus.

One of the most baffling questions about the child mummy has always been its sex, says Turner. "The mummy has a coloured mask on the front of it and therein lies one of the mysteries that we have been very keen to solve. Because the mask tells us that the mummy should be a girl, however other evidence has suggested that it is a boy. Now we have positive proof that's it's actually a boy."

The Toshiba Aquilion 64-slice CT scanner scanned the mummy in 0.5mm slices to produce colour 3-D images that recreated the child's body without disturbing the delicate mummy wrapping. The technique, which has been used by the British Museum, produced images that provided information about the outside tissue of the mummy, the bones and cavities.

A mummified cat and a kitten from the Nicholson collection was also scanned.

The scans will be studied by Turner and forensic Egyptologist Janet Davey, from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine at Monash University.

The scan revealed a penis in the mummy, proving it was a boy.

"The scans are non-invasive and non-destructive," says Davey. "They offer a window into the past to study how children lived and died in ancient Egypt. In the past 10 years the technology has radically improved so that the 3-D reconstructions are almost immediate, so we can look at the skeleton and the tissue and discover things like the sex of the child and also that the brains of the mummy were sucked out through the nose."

The images will be displayed in the Nicholson's upcoming exhibition, Egyptians, Gods & Mummies: Travels with Herodotus and will also form part of a larger forensic study of child mummies from the Graeco/Roman Period that is being carried out by Davey for her PhD research at Monash University, Melbourne.

The CT scan shows great skeletal detail.

For more information please contact Michael Turner, senior curator, Nicholson Museum, on 9036 6485 or m.turner@usyd.edu.au.