Spanish scientists using ground-breaking 3D scanner for mummified remains

Spanish scientists scan mummified remains

A team of Spanish archaeologists and doctors are set to study the cause of death and funeral rituals of four, 4,500-year-old mummified remains. All photos courtesy of the National Archaeological Museum of Spain.

Using a revolutionary 3-D scanner, a team of Spanish archaeologists and doctors are set to study the cause of death and funeral rituals of four, 4,500-year-old mummified remains.

The last time the mummies, three Egyptians and one Guanche, from the Canary Islands, had images taken of them was in 1976.

The scanner, which has low levels of radiation, offers the team a 2,000 cross-section view, at a very high resolution, which can be used to create a three dimensional observation.

“I have spent all my life with these mummies, they are very important pieces and I am looking forward to beginning this new way of studying them ... we will learn many new things about them [to which] until now we could not access," Egyptologist Carmen Perez Die told the Mirror UK.

The mummies were transported from the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, Spain to the University Hospital Quironsalud, and will be studied by Dr. Vicente Martinez de Vega, Javier Carrascoso and Silvia Badillo Rodriguez-Portugal, and Egyptologists Carmen Perez Die, Teresa Gomez Espinosa and Esther Pons.

Spanish channel RTVE will air a documentary about the mummies and their scan next year.

More and more, archeologists around the globe are turning to high-tech means for unparalleled views beneath the bandages of these ancient subjects without fear of disturbing or damaging them.

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