The Fascinating Mummies exhibition was shown the National Museum of Scotland till May 2012. One of the most intriguing exhibits was the Rhind Mummy which was excavated from a tomb in Thebes and was brought to Scotland by the archeologist Alexandar Rhind in 1857. The mummy is still intact in its original wrapping. The secrets of this mummy were finally revealed 155 years later when it was CT scanned by the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. The following video revealing the internals of the mummy was produced in collaboration with Toshiba Medical Systems:
The scan revealed that the Rhind Mummy was an Egyptian female aged 25 to 29, 1.58m tall (5′ 2″) dating back to around 10 B.C. She was revealed to hold a papyrus scroll in her right hand, the so-called Book of Breathing, with instructions to help her on the journey into the afterlife. The cause of death is still unknown, although experts believe it could be an infection followed by untreatable pneumonia.
The Toshiba CT scanner produces 3D volumetric datasets with voxels, or “3D-pixels”, in slices of just half a millimetre. Prof. Van Beek’s team at the Clinical Research Imaging Centre, CRIC, asked Holoxica to assess the feasibility of making a 3D hologram to depict the mummy more accurately. We worked with Dr Martin Connell, Visualisation Enginner at CRIC and Dr Elena Kranioti, Forensic Anthropologist , at Edinburgh University’s School of History & Archeology.
Holoxica managed to produce an animated hologram of the head and upper torso, which reveals different layers of information as the viewer moves from left to right. The first layer is the sarcophagos, or wrapping, peeling away to reveal the face followed by the skull. The outer wrapping is encrusted with jewels and gold amulets, which are visible from all angles. Intruigingly, a metal cap, probably gold, in the shape of a scarb was placed on top of the skull during mummification is revealed towards the right.
This mummy will never be opened and will always remain intact, so the only way to look inside is to use state of the art scanning and visualisation techniques. The colour animated hologram is the best way to depict this artefact, which is life-sized and shows a level of depth, detail and realism that is difficult to demonstrate in any other way.
We submitted the hologram to the MIT Museum for their call to the upcoming conference on holography, ISDH 2012. We are thrilled to hear that it was selected for exhibition from June 2012 till Sept 2013! Go and see it if you get the opportunity and let us know what you think.
Article in the Scotland on Sunday newspaper, 15th Jan 2012
News from Edinburgh University’s School of History, Classics & Archealogy, 6 Mar 2012
Article and news video by Photonics.com, May 2012
Article in the New Scientist Magazine, including a two-page spread of our images, 23 May 2012; it’s just a pity that they didn’t talk about our work or the breakthrough holographic image
