The museum's mummies: an inside view

We have performed CAT scan imaging of the thirteen mummies in the New York The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This noninvasive technique allowed us to ascertain the age (+/- 5 years), the height and the sex of these individuals. In two cases we were able to establish the cause of death – one man dying as the result of trauma and one woman dying of sepsis secondary to an abscess in the mandible. We discovered two necklaces of amulets on one of the mummies and integrating the CAT scan images, we were able to identify the amulets. These two necklaces had previously been unknown to the museum staff. In one instance, the museum has the encaustic portrait mask in place on the mummy itself, so we were able to compare the portrait with the CAT scan image of the mummy and establish that in this particular case the image was a true portrait rather than an idealized portrayal of the person.