Medics check up mummies in Mannheim, Germany

Earth Times

An exhibition of 70 mummies from round the globe is to open Sunday at a German museum, complete with three- dimensional X-ray pictures to reveal probable causes of death. The bodies, some naturally mummified and other embalmed, were given computer tomography (CT) scans by university hospital doctors to reveal symptoms of tuberculosis, arthritic joints and tumours. The Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in the south-western city of Mannheim says the show, till March 24, is the biggest ever devoted to ancient preserved bodies and follows the chilling discovery that the museum had 19 mummies in its own store. The museum had lost track of several of the mummies, which were wrapped in brown paper or packed in cartons 100 years ago, and wrongly assumed they had been destroyed by Second World War bombs. The rest of the exhibits have been borrowed from science institutes and other museums.

See the above page for more - but be warned, it is a bit grizzly and it has met with some very negative critcism.