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Scientists Scan Mummy for Ancient Clues

By BROOKE DONALD
,
AP
posted: 4 HOURS 27 MINUTES AGO
comments: 49
filed under: Science News
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PALO ALTO, Calif. (Aug. 21) - Scientists trying to unwrap the mysteries of a more than 2,500-year-old mummy believed to be an ancient Egyptian priest conducted computer scans Thursday to help determine how the man died, what was buried with him and what he looked like.
In a basement lab at Stanford University Medical School, Iret-net Hor-irw's mummy lay tightly wrapped in tattered linen as a handful of scientists looked on. Starting with his feet, the scanner rotated around the mummy, snapping X-ray type images that appeared on nearby computer screens.
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Ancient Human Remains
Scanning the Past: Scientists conducted detailed digital scans of an ancient Egyptian mummy, believed to be a priest, to learn more about how the man lived and died. Conservators with the San Francisco Fine Arts Museum cover the remains after finishing scans at the Stanford Medical Center on Aug. 20.
Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP
Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP
The pictures, showing well-preserved bone structure, were then mathematically manipulated to generate 3-D images that give a fuller picture of the skeleton.
The highly sophisticated scanning technology allows scientists to learn about the 5-foot-4 inch mummy in remarkable detail without doing invasive or damaging procedures.
"You begin to see features that relate to paleopathology, diseases that may have been suffered by the individual, also mummification style and patterns — how they may change through time," said Dr. Jonathan Elias, director of the Pennsylvania-based Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium, which directs CT scans of mummies and archives the research.
The digital images will also be useful for teaching anatomy to everyone from small children through medical school, said Paul Brown, Consulting Associate Professor at Stanford's Department of Surgery.
"We'll be able to look at every bone in the body, see if there are any fractures ... any artifacts," he said. "It's a mummy, so it makes the interest factor high."
Iret-net Hor-irw's mummy belongs to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. It was dug up from a cemetery in Akhmim, on the east bank of the Nile. Elias said Akhmim was an important provincial capital and the site of one of Egypt's major temples. The maternal relatives of the more famous King Tut also came from there, Elias said.
"The big picture is this is not just the analysis of one mummy," Elias said. Studying Iret-net Hor-irw, for example, can lead to a better understanding of changes in population from his time to the Tutankhamun period.
Scientists have not been able to pinpoint Iret-net Hor-irw's age when he died or his cause of death. The scanning tests may help them get a little closer. For now, they can only date him to around 500 B.C., just before the Persian conquest, when the last native Egyptian dynasty ruled.
"This is one era which is very poorly understood at this point," Elias said. "So if this mummy is of that period, which we believe that he is, we'll be able to begin to write a history that has never been written."
After scientists are finished with him, Iret-net Hor-irw's mummy will be the centerpiece of an exhibit starting in October at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The mummy has been out on loan from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco since 1944, and the exhibit, "Very Postmortem: Mummies and Medicine," is considered his homecoming.
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Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2009-08-21 00:37:37
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RAYMO7WO

03:16 PMAug 21 2009

When they dug this up acouple of weeks ago, it was wearing a red t shirt with an Acorn on it & 10 "I VOTED" in 2008 stickers stuck to it !!!!!!!!!!!!

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Bartstew

03:11 PMAug 21 2009

MOUNT HIGHLY 01:27 PMAug 21 2009 over educated idiots = = = = = = = (resp) How can someone become "over educated" and what is the disadvantage of too much education ?===>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Only here on Anti-intellectuals On Line will you hear people openly singing the praises of a lack of education. And they believe it. They truly are anti-intellectual. Well, sure. Education means considering other ideas, and that threatens their teeny, tiny, antique worldview. Do you think that rabble that was shouting down the healthcare town halls has any brainpower? BrainWASHED, maybe. That's all.

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(1)

Nayss

03:10 PMAug 21 2009

IT'S REALLY AMAZING BEING ABLE TO ANALYZE THIS 2,500 YEAR OLD BODY. SOME OF US, ARE HAVING TOUBLE ANALYZING THE HARSHAW CHEMICAL ACQUISITION BY JAMES P. MOONEY, OMG. AT THE ELYRIA FACILITY, THEY GREW CRYSTALS. FOREMAN WAS CLIFF ROWE. LATER, WAS MADE INTO A COBALT CABONATE PLANT, WITH MATERIAL COMING FROM THE BELGIAN CONGO. EVEN RIEELE HUNTER, JONBONET RAMSEY, CLIFF BAXTER (ENRON) JOHN EDWARDS, DEBBIE ROWE, MICHAEL JACKSON, AND PHIL ANSCHUTZ KNEW THAT.

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Gin711

03:07 PMAug 21 2009

obviously this mummy's insurance doesn't have a public option!

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(0)

AnnEdyth

02:29 PMAug 21 2009

Morosc0- I have read the Bible, and a too literal view is not mine. The world is so extremely complicatied that it would DEFINATLY take more than 7,000 or even 10,000 years to get it up and running!

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vcponsardin1

02:27 PMAug 21 2009

"When the result of the education is not a more informed view of the world but rather serves only to increase the persons certainty that they are superior to others based on this accumulated level of education. It would be better for them to not have had this education and retained a sense of humility." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------- A typical "strawman" argument from someone who lacks the proper education to know better. What makes you think that these highly educated people don't have a "more informed view of the world?" Most of the people I've met with advanced degrees possess extraordinarily well informed views of the world. They are certainly more informed than the average clown on the street or on this board.

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LA Byrd

02:21 PMAug 21 2009

AOL posts are the new public restroom wall, but not nearly so interesting...off subject, uninformed, childish and poorly written. Whatever happened to civility and a willingness to exchange ideas like adults?

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LAr4988516

02:19 PMAug 21 2009

Barbra looks older than the mummy.

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Morosco99

02:11 PMAug 21 2009

What a scam! How can this so-called mummy be two thousand years old if the world was created 7,000 years ago? Read your bible!

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(6)

MOUNT HIGHLY

02:10 PMAug 21 2009

When the result of the education is not a more informed view of the world but rather serves only to increase the persons certainty that they are superior to others based on this accumulated level of education. It would be better for them to not have had this education and retained a sense of humility. Without humility, a person is emotionaly disabled and as such, is "disadvantage(d)"--------------well said, a lack of humility is the key disadvantage that most of our ever so educated politicians are suffering from, and look where it has gotten us!= = = = = = = = = = = I can't really argue with those statements except to say that many of our politicians are not "ever so educated" (the possession of degrees does not necessarily mean one is "educated" in the broader sense. In addition, a high level of education in one field grants no qualifications in another field. Unfortunately some believe it does.)

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Scientists trying to unwrap the mysteries of a more than 2,500-year-old mummy believed to be an ancient Egyptian priest conducted computer scans Thursday to help determine how the man died, what was buried with him and what he looked like.