From the left: Dr. David Goldman (Class of 1988), Dr. Doug Long (Class of 1990), and Dr. Kent Grewe (Class of 1989).
One day in 1988, I learned that the MU Museum of Art and Archaeology, located on the university campus, was planning to bring a mummy to University Hospital Radiology Department for CT scanning. Following evening rounds on the day of the scan was scheduled, three neurosurgery residents and I went to the CT suite, where I took some photos.
Photo Credit: Missouri Alumnus magazine.
The mummy was that of Pet-Menekh. According to journalist Michael C. Purdy and Liam Otten:
Pet-Menekh — or 'he whom the excellent one has given' — is thought to have been a priest of the god Chem during the Ptolemaic period (c. 300 B.C.). He died in his 30s or 40s, possibly of sudden trauma or acute disease. His coffin — likely found at the Necropolis of El-Hawawish in Akhmim — is richly decorated with hundreds of hieroglyphics as well as images of the goddesses Isis and Nut.
Furthermore, Maura Cornman, adjunct assistant professor of art history and archeology notes at "Part of the elaborately painted coffin … is inspired from prayers of the Book of the Dead.”
When we arrived, the mummy was being brought out of the CT scanner. I noted a small loose tag of parchment draping at the mummy’s mid-torso that looked to have a script written on its inner layer. From one of the people that transported the mummy to the medical center, we learned the script was a portion of the Book of the Dead, the guide to the next world. MU’s Cornman explains its purpose:
The theory was that if a mummy made a mistake in reciting these spells, it could go back to the coffin or look at its bandages to brush up.
In use from about 1500 BC to 50 BC, the Egyptian Book of the Dead describes the mummification process used in preparing the deceased for the afterlife. It is commonly believed that the embalmers removed the liquifying brain by passing a hooked instrument into the nose and penetrating the sphenoid bone to reach the intracranial cavity. Recently, a couple of mummies have been identified in which excerebration was performed using an "organic stick."
However, not in the case of Pet-Menekh. Carol Hunter, writing in the winter 1988 issue of the Missouri Alumnus magazine reported:
"Part of the elaborately painted coffin, for instance, is inspired from prayers of the Book of the Dead. 'The theory was that if a mummy made a mistake in reciting these spells, it could go back to the coffin or look at its bandages to brush up,’ says Maura Cornman, museum conservator and adjunct assistant professor of art history and archeology."
After the brain tissue was removed, the embalmers filled the intracranial cavity with resin. Over time, the resin hardened and cracked as in this CT image of the Pet-Menekh mummy.
Among the many images obtained on the Pet-Menekh mummy, we were most interested in those of the brain. The axial CT images dramatically revealed the embalmer's effectiveness at removing the brain tissue. The scans revealed an empty cranium other than the resin - seen here in two layers - inserted by embalmers. Layered at the bottom of the skull, it attests to the mummy lying on his back. In Pet-Menekh's case, for over two thousand years.