Peer Inside a 2,000-Year-Old Egyptian Cat Mummy

Scientist at the University of Aberdeen are using 3D imaging software to create interactive models of mummies and other ancient artifacts.

Transcript

00:00 We have a number of cat mummies in the collection and this was a nice one.

00:03 Basically what we're doing is looking at some items in the University collection

00:07 to make more use of them for teaching. So using photogrammetry and other

00:12 techniques we're able to create virtual versions of objects which otherwise

00:16 just you can't handle for, you know, other than a specialist coming in and looking at

00:19 them. We're really looking at things that will be relevant to students of medicine and

00:23 maybe archaeology as well, but also thinking some of the objects in the

00:27 museum that are rather intriguing and attractive that would get people's

00:29 attention. You are able to get that ability to look very closely, so it's not

00:33 just a representation of the object, it's being able to look at the detail and

00:36 really understand it. That's been really important. The question of course always

00:39 is what's inside it? Is it actually a cat mummy or not? There are cases where what's

00:44 inside is not what you'd expect. We did actually have a crocodile mummy and all

00:49 that was in it was the crocodile's head. There was no body. So we wanted to know,

00:53 so we were able to create this representation of it so we've got a real

00:56 sense of the outside and then also we cat scanned it, and it's a bad pun but

01:01 never mind, and we discovered inside that the real cat is a tiny wee kitten,

01:06 much much smaller than the bandages. So presumably what went on was that

01:10 actually at a temple they were selling mummified cats for people to

01:14 give as a gift to the temple and you'd make more money out of selling a large

01:18 cat than a little one, so they've bulked it out. I think it does give a bit of an

01:22 insight into what was going on in a temple of, you know, daily life and how

01:26 they were making offerings to the gods and etude.

01:29 Photogrammetry is a technique for building 3D models from photographs. So

01:34 basically it consists in taking a lot of photographs around an object and then

01:38 using a clever piece of software to stitch them all together and build a 3D

01:43 model. And the result is very good, the textures are very realistic. So anyone

01:50 can rotate the model, zoom into the object and explore the texture and the

01:57 shape of the 3D model at any device. On the one hand we're thinking of the

02:02 students in University of Aberdeen and their chance to really make use of the

02:06 collections. I mean it's a wonderful privilege being a student in Aberdeen

02:09 when you've got the collection and we need to make more use of it. The other

02:12 thing of course is we're able to web mount them so they're going to be

02:15 available to anybody who wants to see these things. And there are a number of

02:19 international projects looking at things like cat mummies who are

02:21 contributing to international scholarship as well as our own teaching.