Ever wonder what you might look like in 2,000 years?

Thanks to the partnering of Earlham College and Reid Hospital, visitors to Earlham’s Joseph Moore Museum soon will have a visual depiction of the physical makeup of Ta’an, the museum’s ancient Egyptian mummy, which recently underwent a CT-scan that will be used to create a bust and full-body display.

During the scan, oohs, ahs, and other assorted exclamations and reactions filled the room as the images began to take shape on computer screens. Professors, students, nurses and radiologic technologists watched as Ta’an was digitally recreated layer by layer.

“It was really cool to see the mummy as a person instead of just a body,” says first-year student Andrew Hood, who had the opportunity to witness the process as part of the transport crew.

Senior Finn Olcott says he was bursting with excitement after he helped with the nerve-wracking task of safely transporting Ta’an back to the museum.

“In short, that was one of the most amazing things I have ever done in a two-hour period,” the enthusiastic Olcott says. “Being able to witness the energy in the scanning room was really awesome. It was a special moment for the Reid staff and our group alike. It was also neat to see the collaborative effort between Reid and the museum to make this discovery/research possible.”

Gene DiTullio, director of radiology services at Reid, says the hospital was glad to help.

“We were very excited to be a part of this scientific endeavor,” DiTullio says. “Not every hospital gets to scan a mummy. We had done a trial run and reviewed information with a physician who had done similar scans, so we had a good idea about what types of techniques and protocols to use in the scan. I think because we took the proper steps beforehand, the process went really smoothly.”

CT Supervisor Lisa Hicks says 10,300 images were taken during the scanning process. The images will be used by the Akhmim Mummy Study Consortium in Harrisburg, Pa., to create a bust and the facial reconstruction that will be incorporated into the Joseph Moore Museum’s permanent exhibit. A full-body 3-D display will be added later. 

“It was really amazing to be able to see what the CT technologists can do with the information from the CT scan — from being able to see a 3D image of her skull to seeing that she had all of her teeth,” says senior Brittany Greene.

Ta’an also visited Reid Hospital in 1979 for X-rays.

“From the previous X-rays, we learned that the mummy was a young woman about 20 years old at the time of her death,” says Heather Lerner, museum director and assistant professor of biology. “Her wisdom teeth had just come in, and growth arrest lines in her tibiae and femora indicate that there were times in her life when either she was ill or malnourished, or both.”

Lerner says prostate and lung cancer have been detected in two other mummies through recent CT-scans, and she is hoping Ta’an’s scan also may reveal clues to her early death.

In addition, Lerner is setting up an ancient DNA lab in the museum and hopes to sequence Ta’an’s DNA during future student/faculty research opportunities.

“My hope is that we will have enough quality DNA to reconstruct her genotype using 50 to 100 base pair pieces of DNA,” she says. “Sequencing a mummy’s DNA is a very difficult thing to do. There have been a lot of changes in 2,000 years. The DNA is old and degraded.

“If we are able to sequence her DNA, we may also be able to sequence any genetic diseases or viruses that she may have had.  I’m hoping that we can find out what plagued her and led to her early death.”

The Joseph Moore Museum mummy was purchased from the Government Museum in Cairo by Earlham President Joseph John Mills in 1889 while he was traveling in Egypt. Mills believed he was buying the mummy of an ancient Egyptian king when he shipped it to Earlham to be displayed in the museum’s collection. The mummy survived the 1924 Lindley Hall fire and was redisplayed in 1952 when the museum opened at its current site. 

The hieroglyphs on top of her coffin reveal that her name was likely Ta’an, meaning beautiful one, and that she was the daughter of a priest named Irethorrou. She lived in the ancient town of Ipu during the Greco-Roman period and probably died between 200 B.C. and 100 A.D.

In 2007 Dr. Laura D’Alessandro, head of the Conservation Laboratory at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, developed a plan for the proper conservation, storage and display of Ta’an. In 2009, D’Alessandro cleaned a century of dust, dirt and soot from the mummy and worked to stabilize the fragmentation of her coffin.

Lerner says she is excited to rework the mummy’s current exhibit to include the bust and full-body display to teach museum visitors about Egypt and its culture.

“I’m thinking about a display with the full regalia of the time as well as what she might wear today on the Earlham campus,” Lerner says. “With the bust and full-body construction, visitors will be more likely to think of her as a real person. With Earlham’s international campus, I think she fits in here.” 

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