Under The Wrappings - The - Lady - Hor

CT scan is short for Computed Tomography, which is a kind of medical imaging that captures a three dimensional image of the object including the interior of the object. It's based on a series of two dimensional X-rays. While these are fragile and tricky to pack and transport, Brooklyn Museum registrars and conservators worked with the art packer to come up with a design to safely transport the mummies for their trip to the hospital. In the packaging we used a lot of different kinds of foam products to support the mummy adequately and also to absorb shock. The day was exhausting for everyone, but we ended up with a ton of new information, not only about the individuals themselves but about the ancient Egyptian techniques of mummification. One of the biggest benefits of the CT scans that the Brooklyn Museum made in 2008 and 2009 of its human mummies is that it allowed us to figure out which ones were men and which ones were women. We took five mummies to the hospital to be CT scanned believing that three of them were women and three of them were men. It turned out though from the CT scans that only two of them were men. The one good example of how these misunderstandings took place is with so called Lady Hor who you see here. She had an especially beautiful face according to one early curator who looked at her. Because she also had no beard, this was interpreted to mean that the mummy had to be a woman. The CT scan showed us that this was impossible because the mummy inside is clearly anatomically male. This is just one example of how modern science has helped us understand ancient mummies.