Mysterious sex of 2000 year old mummy

In early 2011, a 2,000-year-old mummy was brought to the Illinois state hospital for researchers to use imaging technology to learn about life as well as the cause of death. of this child.

>>>Discover the most mysterious mummies in the world

Conducting CT scans in March 2011 revealed some interesting information: a face with a thin structure, cotton clothes wrapped around the body, the viscera of the body are clearly visible, including both the brain and the bone behind the severely broken head occur after death.

However, this scanning process does not shed light on what the mummy's gender problem is.

"The core part of the gender problem is the pelvis has broken, so anthropologists cannot do traditional measurements on the pelvis to determine its gender, being a boy or a girl." , Sarah Wisseman, an archaeologist conducting the study said.

This is not the first time the mummy was bought from the Spurlock Museum in 1989, which was of interest to the medical community. The mummy is so fragile that it needs to be preserved. Scientists must find a way not to ruin when conducting research on mummies.

Because the pelvis is broken, extracting DNA from the leg bone is not successful
Scientists have not yet determined the sex of this mummy (Photo: Livescience)

After examining the teeth and bones of the mummy, scientists said the mummy was from a child of about 7-9 years old. The mummy was also first scanned at the Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, Illinois. Scanning CT using X-ray will reveal the image of bone and soft tissue. This technique allows researchers to reconstruct three-dimensional images of mummies, including internal organs.

After 20 years of research, advances in technology allow researchers to create more high-resolution images and better reproduction, revealing new details, but the big problem - the gender of the body Marinated remains unresolved.

This is a mysterious mummy. Very little information comes with the mummy when it was bought by the museum from a private collector. The mummy was brought to the United States in the 1920s. But no one knows how it was brought and in what region from Egypt to the United States.

In the mummy's packaging, the researchers found a portrait of a male face. Portraits act as an additional identifier for the dead, but, based on previous research on Egyptian mummies, portraits sometimes come not from the dead, Wisseman said.

Comes with the mummy also has images of Egyptian gods painted outside the packaging. Both discovered this image, revealing the time when the mummy was created around 100, in the Egyptian region of the Roman Empire.

The three-dimensional reconstructed mummy face by forensic imaging experts at the National Center for Lost Children found that the child is likely to be a Western Asian or Mediterranean.

The red pigment on the packaging turned out to be lead oxide from Spanish mines. This is similar to the mummy group from Roman times at the Spurlock Museum. It was supposed to be an expensive chemical at the time that proved this child could belong to a wealthy family. Conducting a detailed dental analysis shows that this is a child about 9.5 years old when he dies. But an attempt to extract DNA from a leg bone for research was unsuccessful.

While current technology can only provide certain limited clues about mummies. Hopefully in the future will solve the remaining basics. Members of the research team plan to discuss the new image results on October 2, 2011, at the Spurlock Museum in Urbana, Illinois.