London, Ont. — Even 2,300-year-old female Egyptian mummies can’t avoid the burning mortality issue of the day: Did she die of SARS?
Wednesday as University of Western Ontario anthropology professor Andrew Nelson was beginning the laser imaging process that will help produce a unique “virtual mummy” out of a real mummy usually housed in a Chatham, Ont. museum, a cameraman asked him if “Cleo” died of SARS.
“I hope not,” shot back Prof. Nelson.
What he hopes for is that within six weeks or so he will have a perfect 3-D representation of the 30-something woman with bad teeth and bone stresses, suggesting she regularly went hungry as child.
Part of the reconstruction will include creating a face for what now looks more like a tea coloured, bumpy log than a human.
The first stage of the process entailed quick (so fast that journalists had to strain to see them) external scans with a Minolta Vivid 9000 laser camera. Within a minute parts of Cleo’s body was reconstructed on a screen in a room in the National Research Council laboratory.
Wednesday night, the mummy which is just over one metre tall, will be taken to the St. Joseph Health Centre, also in London, for the first of the CT scans that will see what exists inside of her.
“What we want to construct is an osteobiography, that is a biography out of her skeletal remains,” Prof. Nelson said. Questions abound. Is there a bit of her brain still left behind in her skull? Are some of her organs wrapped up in a bag inside her? What is the design of the beaded headdress X-rays showed were wrapped around her neck?
Overriding this is a general interest in what the reconstruction might tell about the life and times of a long dead woman. “People are interested in mummies, because mummies are people,” Prof. Nelson said.
The woman was originally sold to George Sulman, a Chatham merchant, in 1913 while he was on a Grand Tour that included visiting Egypt. The woman was billed as a Ptolymaic princess, but X-ray imaging done two years ago suggests she was more likely a wealthy commoner who sought immortality through mummification.
“Anyone who had enough money could get themselves mummified,” said Prof. Nelson about the procedure.
He hopes that the 3-D reconstruction process will add a real humanity to Cleo’s currently sketchy life history. One basic thing that should come out of the procedure is a facial reconstitution. This will entail reconstructing a face out of both computerized imaging and an artistic sensibility.
“The reconstruction process will be partially a recreation of anatomy and partially a result of the artistic vision of the person doing the reconstruction,” Prof. Nelson said.
What is unique about the reconstruction he said is that it marks the first time that CT scans and laser scans have been put together to recreate an image with both internal and external features shown.
