More re discovery that Lady Hor is actually a man

Newsday (Erik Badia)

With a photograph of the upper section of the mummy.

Egyptologists from the Brooklyn Museum and doctors from North Shore University Hospital learned Tuesday through a CT scan that a 2,500-year-old mummy previously thought to be a woman - and named Lady Hor - actually was a man.

Dr. Jesse Chusid said that while the mummy's body wrap of linen covered in plaster, called cartonnage, bore the shape of a woman, the body within had the anatomy of a man.

When Lady Hor's image appeared on the screen, "we knew almost immediately that it was not a woman," Chusid said. "You can actually see there are the pelvic organs of a male."

The discovery was made after Chusid, a radiologist, and Dr. Amgad Makaryus, director of cardiac CT and MRI at the Manhasset hospital, performed a 64-slice computed tomography, or CT scan, on the mummy.

The revelation was startling for those from the Brooklyn Museum, as the mummy for decades was believed to be female.

"The re-gendering is a big deal to us," said Edward Bleiberg, the museum's curator of Egyptian art. He explained that the lack of a traditional male beard on the cartonnage had led him and other Egyptologists to believe that he was a she.