Digital x-ray firm Kubtec's x-ray technology has been used to image two mummified packages housed for more than a century at the Yale Peabody Museum.
The contents of the packages have been a mystery to researchers, Kubtec said. Dr. Salima Ikram from the American University in Cairo used the company's Parameter and Xpert 80-L x-ray devices to image the two mummies.
One package, which arrived at Yale in 1915 after being excavated in Abydos, contained the body of an ibis, a bird considered sacred to the Egyptian god Thoth. Images showed partially digested food in the animal, such as fragments of plant material, the remains of fish vertebrae, and snail shells. The second mummy was a young gazelle, which came to the museum in 1911 from Luxor. Gazelles were considered sacred to the goddess Anuket, Kubtec said.
