radiography

Getting off on the right foot in Roman Canterbury

Researchers from Canterbury Christ Church University have developed a novel method for visualising Roman footwear, even in cases where the leather has completely disintegrated, by using radiography on soil-blocks containing hobnails. The study was based on a Romano-British (late 3rd…

The screaming mummy

The mummy of a woman with a screaming facial expression (below) has attracted a great deal of press attention recently, with headlines suggesting she died in agony. However, in spite of a recent examination using advanced scanning techniques, the cause…

Sacrificial crocodile

A large crocodile mummy from the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery in the UK has revealed new insights into the popular crocodile cults of ancient Egypt. Used as votives to the Nile god Sobek, huge numbers of animals were killed…

Mummy with twins

CT-scans of a female mummy from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History have revealed the teenaged girl was pregnant with twins, and she may have died in childbirth. One foetus had been wrapped and placed between the mother’s legs…

Left A copper alloy coffin surmounted by the figure of a lizard. Neutron imaging shows the contents of the box include a lizard skull.

Animal mummy discoveries

Researchers at the British Museum have used a new technology called neutron tomography to reveal the contents of six votive animal coffins, made of copper alloy, without having to open them. The technique involved sending beams of neutrons through each…

BELOW One of Saqqara’s newly discovered coffins was opened for X ray analysis.

More mummies unveiled at Saqqara

As well as the coffins, which date to the Late Period (525-332 BC) and Ptolemaic Dynasty (323-30 BC), Egyptian archaeologists found shabtis, amulets, four gilded funerary masks, and 40 statues of Ptah Sokar, a prominent god of Saqqara.