3D-rendered CT images of mummified individual showing the carapace and broken sections Photo: Sowada et al, PLOS ONE, courtesy Chau Chak Wing Museum and Macquarie Medical Imaging
An ancient Egyptian mummy’s painted mud shell may have been a budget-conscious way of copying elite embalming methods, write researchers in the science journal Plos One. The shell, found under the mummy’s wrappings, was first identified in 1999, but has only now been fully revealed thanks to modern CT scans. It covers the entire body, and was painted white over the head and red over the face. The study also revealed that the mummy held in the collection of the Chau Chak Wing Museum in Sydney, Australia is probably that of a woman, who was 26 to 35 years old when she died around 1200-1113 BC.