Peer inside a mummified cat from historical Egypt, courtesy of high-res 3D X-rays

Scientists have digitally unwrapped three mummified animals from ancient Egypt using Micro CT scanning. Above: Digital unwrapping of a mummified cat's head, likely a strangled kitten.

Enlarge / Scientists have digitally unwrapped three mummified animals from historical Egypt utilizing Micro CT scanning. Above: Digital unwrapping of a mummified cat’s head, seemingly a strangled kitten. (credit score: Swansea College)

The traditional Egyptians mummified animals in addition to people, mostly as votive choices to the gods obtainable for buy by guests to temples. A lot of these mummified stays have survived however are in such a fragile state that researchers are loath to disturb the stays to study extra about them. Now an inter-disciplinary staff of scientists has managed to digitally “unwrap” three specimens—a mummified cat, chook, and snake—utilizing a high-resolution 3D X-ray imaging method, basically enabling them to conduct a digital postmortem, in accordance with a brand new paper printed within the journal Scientific Reviews.

Learning fragile historical artifacts with cutting-edge imaging expertise confers a strong benefit on archaeological evaluation. As an example, in 2016, a global staff of scientists developed a way for “just about unrolling” a badly broken historical scroll discovered on the western shore of the Useless Sea, revealing the primary few verses from the e book of Leviticus. The so-called En Gedi scroll was recovered from the ark of an historical synagogue destroyed by hearth round 600 CE.

In 2019, we reported that German scientists used a mix of cutting-edge physics methods to just about “unfold” an historical Egyptian papyrus, a part of an in depth assortment housed within the Berlin Egyptian Museum. Their evaluation revealed {that a} seemingly clean patch on the papyrus really contained characters written in what had change into “invisible ink” after centuries of publicity to gentle. And earlier this 12 months, we reported that scientists had used multispectral imaging on 4 supposedly clean Useless Sea Scrolls and located the scrolls contained hidden textual content, more than likely a passage from the e book of Ezekiel.  

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