Chicago

Extraordinary images from within the unopened casket of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy have been revealed using a highly advanced hospital scanner.

The elaborately decorated coffin contains the wrapped remains of Meresamun, a woman believed to have been a singer priestess at a temple in Thebes in 800BC.

Experts do not want to disturb the casket, but a Philips Brilliance iCT scanner has allowed them to obtain 3D images of the mummy, still wrapped in linen bandages. An exhibition featuring the mummy opens tomorrow at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute Museum.

Meresamun’s name, shown in an inscription on the casket, means “She Lives for Amun” (an Egyptian god). According to the inscription, she served as a “Singer in the Interior of the Temple of Amun”. She appears to have been 5ft 5in, and in her late twenties or early thirties when she died. The sealed casket was bought in Egypt in 1920 by James Henry Breasted, founder of the institute.

Michael Vannier, the American radiologist who led the scanner team, said: “We could see subtle things – wear patterns on the teeth, a clear view of the embalming incision, precise indications of her age – that were not apparent before.”

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