PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 21 (UPI) -- A high-tech scan of a 2,500-year-old Egyptian mummy will help show how he lived, died and was preserved, Stanford University radiologists say.
A computed tomography scan, or CT scan, was taken Thursday at Stanford's School of Medicine in California to help create 3-D images of the mummy, thought to be Iret-net Hor-irw, a minor priest from Akhmim who died by age 20 of unknown causes, said Renee Dreyfus, a curator at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
"What we're trying to do is merge science, culture, history, medicine, art," Dreyfus said. "It gives us an opportunity to incorporate modern techniques and procedures along with one of the oldest things in our collections."
Information from the scan will help create a clay reconstruction of the mummy's face and a computer demonstration -- or "fly-through" -- of his skeleton, The San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News reported Friday.
The mummy is to be the centerpiece of an exhibition called "Very Postmortem: Mummies and Medicine," the San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday.
