Louisville Science Center's mummy is female

Courier Journal (Sheldon S. Shafer)

After extensive computer modeling, University of Louisville J.B. Speed School of Engineering experts believe they have finally determined the gender of the 2,600-year-old Egyptian mummy called Then-Hotep . . . .

The team took the medical data from the CAT scans and X-rays donated by Baptist Hospital East. The X-rays "were sliced like bread" into 190 micro-thin strips and fed into the Speed School computers, said Mike Miller, a research engineer who worked on the project.

Each strip was aligned and digitally reconstructed, with the pieces assembled to make a computer 3-D model of the skull, Miller said. The model replicated the bone structure and tissue.

Once the engineers had developed the 3-D model, they hooked the computer up to machines that, with the help of a laser, produced two types of models of the skull. One was a life-sized model made of a hard nylon material and the other was a smaller one made of a hardened liquid photopolymer.

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