An ancient baby Egyptian mummy from the Royal Ontario Museum is CT scanned. Here's a trailer from a cool new Canadian TV series called Museum Secrets.
According to Professor Nelson, the video tells us a few very important things about the baby.
"The body of the baby is very compressed, while the head is reasonably intact. That suggests that the body wasn't compressed mechanically, or the skull would have been smashed flat too. The compression is probably due to the desiccation that is part of mummification."
"The skeleton is fairly typical of a baby of this age, but babies of this age do not normally have a board thrust from their thorax into the base of their skull – nor do they have many of their thoracic vertebrae out of place. The rotation reveals the damage to the back and base of the skull, and the placement of the board between the shoulder blades where the thoracic spine should be."
"The detailed analysis… shows the individual tooth buds, allowing us to estimate the age at death, at 9 months. It shows that the board probably displaced the bones of the base of the skull – thrusting them up into the cranial cavity."
Museum Secrets: Episode 3: Inside the ROM broadcasts for the first time at 10 PM ET/PT tonight on History Television (Canada).
Amanda Connon-Unda, a spokesperson from the production company said, "Currently the show is broadcasting (and with full episodes online) only in Canada, but USA and Europe broadcasts dates WILL BE released from our distributor, BBC Worldwide, later this year." Perhaps to soothe the ire of non-Canadians, Amanda gave us kind permission to post a video of the CT scan of the baby mummy.
