But what secrets are hidden under this mummy’s wrappings? What mysteries does a 3,000-year-old high official, today known as the mummy Seramon, hide? Here, no hat or whip, but scientists. The result of a partnership between the Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology of Besançon where the mummy was kept and researchers at the Hospices Civils de Lyon, Séramon will be studied very, very closely with a clinical prototype of a scanner unique in the world, the photon counting spectral scanner.
Developed by researchers from the Center for Research in Image Acquisition and Processing for Health (Creatis) in collaboration with the company Philips and hosted within the Cermep platform on the eastern site of the Hospices Civils de Lyon, this scanner should reveal new details on the health of this mummy. This spectral photon counting scanner (SPCCT) makes it possible to study a mummy without risk of deterioration. Scientists today use non-invasive imaging methods.
New information previously invisible
In 1984, a first x-ray of the Saramon mummy detected opacities that could correspond to amulets, confirmed by a more powerful scanner in 2007 carried out by Dr Samuel Merigeaud, radiologist, director of Tridilogy and expert in the field of mummy imaging. . But with this new type of spectral scanner, a new step in the exploration of this treasure of ancient Egypt has been reached and will reveal new information that was previously invisible.
This original approach is a world first. Thanks to this examination, scientists should be able to read for the first time the hieroglyphs inscribed on the scarab placed on Seramon’s chest, or to identify the amulets of the necklace which had not been able to be identified until here. But the SPCCT scanner goes further. Thanks to its high spatial resolution, researchers were able to visualize previously unseen pathological elements, such as vertebral fractures, hip osteoarthritis and carotid atheroma. The presence of the heart remains to be identified, leaving many secrets still to be elucidated…