Peering Inside an Ancient Mummy

LONDON, ENGLAND—CT scans of the well-preserved mummy of Tamut, a woman who sang in a temple in Luxor in 900 B.C., reveal that she had short hair and clogged arteries. “There are a number of amulets lying on the front of the body. We knew that there were objects but we couldn’t see them with any clarity. Now we can see them and even work out what they are made from,” John Taylor, curator of Egyptian archaeology at the British Museum, told The Telegraph. Tamut was at least 30 years old when she died, and her organs had been removed, preserved, and placed back in her body cavity, along with beeswax figurines. “The way we investigate mummies is not by unwrapping but by looking underneath the bandages in a non-disruptive way,” added museum director Neil MacGregor.