CT scan peers inside Anniston mummy

The Anniston Star (Patrick McCreless)

With video.

Anniston Museum of Natural History employees anxiously sat in the CT imaging lobby at Regional Medical Center Wednesday evening –- as if waiting for a friend or relative in the examining room.

They’d certainly treated her as such, less than an hour earlier.

With the utmost care, they had lifted the patient from her resting place at the museum and carried her to a hearse, where she then received a police escort to the hospital.

After nearly 45 minutes without a word, the doors to the imaging room opened and the diagnosis was revealed.

Don Spaulding, museum curator of collections, was amazed at what he heard.

“What surprised me is she was very young,” Spaulding said. “Now I really want to know how she died.”

The patient in question was Tasherytpamenekh (pronounced Ta-SHER-eet-pa-MEN-eck), one of the museum’s two 2,000-year-old Egyptian mummies. The female mummy’s trip to RMC was a rare chance for experts to learn more about her and the ancient mummification process itself.