'I use CT to do non-invasive examination of fully wrapped mummies or sealed artefacts that had been kept in the basement of the museum without being studied or examined before,' said Prof Saleem, a professor of radiology in Cairo University’s Faculty of Medicine. Prof Saleem and two researchers from the museum used CT scanning, which is widely used in medicine to look inside the body, to reveal the mummy’s extraordinary secrets.
The cemetery was in use from 332 to 30 BCE, the year the Ptolemaic Kingdom ended with the death of Cleopatra VII. The boy lived during the latter years of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, an Ancient Greek civilisation in Egypt, and was found in 1916 at a cemetery in Edfu, a city near the west bank of the Nile between Aswan and Esna. The mummy is now on display at the Egyptian Museum alongside computerised tomography images and a 3D-printed version of a heart scarab amulet. 'The large number of amulets, with variety in shapes, many golden amulets, and the unique arrangement of the amulets in three columns are definitely extraordinary findings and may indicate the high class of the deceased,' he told The National. He said it was unusual for someone of the boy’s age - he was probably in his mid-teens - to be buried with so many amulets. Their purpose, said Prof Sahar Saleem, of Cairo University, the first author of a study describing the mummy, was to protect the body and 'give it vitality in the afterlife'.
