Technology reveals details of 1,000-year-old mummies

Eight mummies from ancient Egypt and Sudan will be displayed at an exhibit from Thursday at the The British Museum in London, media reported.

At this new exhibition named 'Ancient Lives New Discoveries', the British Museum will display the bodies of the eight people who have been preserved naturally or by deliberate embalming, after being scanned by an advanced CT scanner, Xinhua reported.

The exhibition will unlock hidden secrets of those people, as well as people's lives about 4,000 years ago that have never been revealed before.

"Those CT scans have been specially processed to produce amazing 3D images of the mummies what's inside them. So we can learn about how old these people were, what were their state of health, how were they mummified. Lots of interesting questions which we do not get much information from written sources will be solved through the technology," said John Taylor, curator of Ancient Egypt and Sudan.

The eight mummies on this exhibition were selected from different places in Egypt and Sudan. They were from all walks of life and at different ages with different genders, including two children, a temple singer and a doorkeeper.

One mummy, which is found in a woman's coffin and generally believed for hundreds of years to be female, was proved a man through latest CT scanners, while a spatula was found inside the skull of a female mummy, which was believed belonging to ancient Egyptian embalmers.

The exhibition will be open to public from May 22 to Nov 30.