Another mummy under the scanner

Anniston Star (Patrick McCreless)

One of Anniston’s oldest residents has kept her secrets hidden behind carefully wrapped linen bandages for more than 2,000 years.

But after a visit to Regional Medical Center, those ancient secrets finally will be revealed.

Anniston Museum of Natural History officials plan to transport Tasherytpamenekh (pronounced Ta-SHER-eet-pa-MEN-eck), one of their two Ptolemaic-era Egyptian mummies, to the Tyler Center at RMC Aug. 18 for a state-of-the-art, 64-slice computerized tomography, or CT, scan.

The information from the scan will then be sent to the Ohio-based Phillips Corporation, where the data will be used to render a three-dimensional forensic image of the mummified woman, something never before possible.

“We are all very eager to see the images resulting from this scan and also from the subsequent forensic reconstruction,” Anniston Museum Director Cheryl Bragg said in a press release. “It’s a great honor for us to be a part of this, and we look forward to being able to share a lot of new information with the public as well as other scientific institutions.”

The CT scanner, which RMC acquired about a year ago, is typically used by the hospital to diagnose ailments in patients’ chests, abdomens and pelvic areas. The device combines a series of X-ray views from many different angles to create cross-sectional images of tissue and bone inside a person’s body.