- Meet 'Nes' - though he may not have been as nice as he
looks. In fact, personality type is now pretty much the only thing we don't
know about Nesperennub, an Egyptian priest in his forties who lived 2,800
years ago on the banks of the Nile.
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- In a technological and historical world first, this weekend
the British Museum has unveiled or, more accurately, unwrapped the interior
of a mummy that had remained sealed since it was made by masters of the
ancient Egyptian craft of mummification. The startling operation was carried
out without disturbing the intricate wrappings and amulets that were originally
placed around his dead body.
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- Using scanning technology developed by neurological researchers
in a London hospital, the British Museum has recreated the kind of public
'unrolling' of a mummy that used to draw crowds in the 19th century. In
those days irreversible damage was often caused to the remains inside and
many mummies were discarded and lost forever.
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- Nes, as curatorial staff refer to the mummy, came to
the British Museum around 40 years ago and has remained one of the Egpytology
department's mysteries ever since.
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- 'Nes had been X-rayed once when he first arrived, but
the pictures were very fuzzy,' said John Taylor, a curator in the Egypt
department and the man who has developed the new 'virtual unrolling' process
in collaboration with an English executive of the American virtual technology
specialists, Silicon Graphics Incorporated. By combining the latest scanning
techniques with 3D computer animation, the museum has reconstructed a virtual
Nes, right down to the interior of his body.
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- 'All we really know about a mummy from the outside is
what the person's name is and what they did as a job. We can now find out
what they looked like, how old they were, whether they were healthy and
how they died,' said Taylor.
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- 'But what is really new about what we have done here
is that Nes can be used again and again as an experimental model, like
a guinea pig really, instead of just offering us a series of static images.'
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- Together the scientists and historians have discovered
every detail of the dead priest's physical condition and burial procedure.
They now know, for instance, that he had an abscess at the base of one
of his teeth and that the mummifying team who worked on him made rather
a botched job. It is not possible to tell from the outside, but a burial
pot was accidentally glued to the priest's head. 'The team must have assumed
no one would ever find out, so they just carried on and covered it up,'
said Taylor.
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- Yet there is one new mystery about Nes, who once officiated
at rituals inside the temple of Khons in Karnak in 800 BC. In the process
of creating a 3D representation of his skull, the team discovered a small
hole, like a bullet hole, near his brain.
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- 'It is an anomaly,' said Taylor, 'because it appears
to be destroying the brain from the inside out and yet it does not seem
to be the cause of death.'
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- Neurologists have suggested a variety of explanations,
ranging from a tumour to a cranial form of tuberculosis, but nothing fits
completely because there are no other signs of disease in the body.
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- Families who would like to be introduced to Nes, and
perhaps take a virtual trip through his body, should visit the museum's
special exhibition Mummy: The Inside Story, which opens this week.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1248425,00.html
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