When scientists looked under the wraps of two little ones ancient egyptian the mummies thought they had human hearts, they were surprised: not only were there no notable hearts inside, but the remains were not even human.
Rather, one of the mummies It is tightly packed with grain and mud, one called a corn or grain mummy, while the other contains the remains of a bird, possibly a hawk, missing a part of its body and various organs, the researchers found.
“His left leg is missing, nobody knows why,” said Dr. Marcia Javitt, president of radiology at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Israel, and an adjunct professor of radiology at George Washington University in Washington, DC, who helped scan the mummies. with computed tomography (CT) on June 29.
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The two mummies, both buried in sarcophagi, have been housed in the Haifa Museum for about 50 years. However, “the records were not kept as diligently as they are now,” so not much is known about them except that they are more than 2,000 years old, Ron Hillel, registrar and head of collections management, told Live Science. Haifa Museums.
In recent years, the Haifa National Maritime Museum has been reviewing its collection and determining the best way to preserve each artifact. When the healers encountered the two mummies, they realized that they did not know what was inside. The records noted that they contained mummified heartsBut “we did the research and it didn’t make sense,” said Hillel. Often, (but not always) “the hearts were left in the body” of the Egyptian mummies, said Hillel, because the ancient Egyptians thought that when people died, their hearts would be weighed against a feather representing ma’at, an Egyptian concept that includes the truth and justice, Live Science previously reported. If the heart weighed the same or less than the pen, these people would gain eternal life; if not, they would be destroyed.
the CT scans done at the Rambam Hospital revealed that the mummies had very different interiors from each other. The approximately 18-inch-long (45-centimeter) mummy in human form, designed to resemble Osiris, the god of the afterlife, the dead, life and vegetation, contained mud and grains.
“During the Osiris festivals that took place, [the ancient Egyptians] would produce this, “said Hillel.” It would be a mixture of clay or sand with these grains, and then they would submerge it in water and the grains would germinate. “In effect, this act would bind Osirus to the death, life, and fertility of the earth.
Or, as Javitt said, “They are not real mummies; they are artifacts.”
The other mummy, a bird-shaped mummy approximately 10 inches long (25 cm), represented the god Horus. According to Egyptian mythology, Horus was the falcon-headed son of Osiris and Isis; a deity associated with heaven and pharaohs.
Over time, the bird’s mummy had dried out, meaning the tissue became denser, like dried meat. Meanwhile, the marrow in the bones had dried, leaving nothing but delicate bone tubes. So Javitt and his colleagues used a dual energy computed tomography, which uses both X-rays and less powerful X-rays, a technique that can reveal tissue properties that a regular CT scan cannot, Javitt said.
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“To differentiate soft tissues from each other and bone, etc., it can be very helpful to use dual energy CT,” said Javitt.
Now his team is identifying the bird’s various tissues and bones. Javitt noted that the bird’s neck is broken, but that this injury probably occurred after the bird was dead. That’s because the skin is also broken, and in most cases of broken bones, “usually the skin doesn’t open from one edge to the opposite side, it just breaks the bone,” Javitt said.
Also, the bird appears to be missing some of its abdominal organs, but more study is needed to determine which ones are not there, he said. For example, the heart appears to be present, as does the trachea.
In the future, Hillel said that the museum may make a special exhibition focused on these two mummies. He also expects them to come out with radiocarbon 14, so the museum can determine their age.
Originally published in Live Science.
