Archaeologists look inside ancient Egyptian mummy with high-energy particle accelerator

Scientists recently discovered a new tool that allowed them to look inside an ancient Egyptian mummy: a high-energy particle accelerator.

The Hibbard mummy contains the body of a young Egyptian girl, believed to be around 5 years old when she died at the end of the first century A.D. She lived in an agricultural community west of the Nile, and likely died of a disease like smallpox or malaria.

Northwestern University Researchers temporarily removed the mummy from its home in a collection at the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary at Northwestern University and brought it to the Argonne National Laboratory, situated just outside Chicago. There, they used the Advanced Photon Source—the brightest X-ray source in the Western hemisphere—to look inside without risking any damage.

Archaeologists have used X-rays before. In 2016, Wired reported that X-rays were allowing researchers to read ancient texts that had been buried inside mummy-containing coffins. High-definition CT scans have been used to look at mummies, too. This, nevertheless, is the first time a high-energy particle accelerator, which is usually intended for physics-based research as opposed to medical or biological, has been used to look at mummified remains.

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