The 3,000-year-old mummy of the ancient Egyptian priest Nesperennub has never been removed from its beautifully painted case. Like a freshly discovered archaeological site, it contains a wealth of data about the remote past, yet until recently, this information remained inaccessible. Now the latest noninvasive imaging technology, combining computer tomography (CT) scanning with leading-edge computer graphics, has revealed what lies inside.
This astonishing book documents the first-ever "virtual mummy," a three-dimensional rendering of the body that can be viewed interactively, repeatedly and from many different angles. In a sequence of dozens of startlingly clear images, readers are taken on a tour inside the "unwrapped" mummy to examine the skull, bones, internal organs, and the entombed objects: a protective amulet and an enigmatic bowl. In the process, we learn the answers to a wide range of questions about Nesperennub: How old was he? What did he look like? What diseases did he suffer from? How was he mummified? Mummy: The Inside Story provides a fascinating glimpse of the potential of modern technology to reshape our understanding of past societies. AUTHOR BIO: John H. Taylor is assistant keeper in the department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum in London and the author of Egyptian Coffins, Unwrapping a Mummy, and Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt.