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.

00:04 Basically what we're doing is looking at some items in the University collection to

00:08 make more use of them for teaching. So using photogrammetry and other techniques

00:12 we're able to create virtual versions of objects which otherwise just you can't

00:17 handle for, you know, other than a specialist coming in and looking at them.

00:20 We're really looking at things that will be relevant to students of medicine and maybe

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

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

00:30 You are able to get that ability to look very closely, so it's not just a representation

00:34 of the object, it's being able to look at the detail and really understand it.

00:37 That's been really important. The question of course always is what's inside it?

00:41 Is it actually a cat mummy or not? There are cases where what's inside is not

00:45 what you'd expect. We did actually have a crocodile mummy and all that was in it

00:50 was the crocodile's head, there was no body. So we wanted to know, so we were

00:54 able to create this representation of it so we've got a real sense of the

00:57 outside and then also we cat scanned it, and it's a bad pun but never mind, and we

01:03 discovered inside that the real cat is a tiny wee kitten, much, much smaller than

01:07 the bandages. So presumably what went on was that actually at a temple they were

01:11 selling mummified cats for people to give as a gift to the temple and

01:16 you'd make more money out of selling a large cat than a little one, so they've

01:20 bulked it out. I think it does give a bit of an insight into what was going on in

01:24 the temple of daily life and how they were making offerings to the gods

01:28 and Egypt. Photogrammetry is a technique for building 3D models from

01:33 photographs, so basically it consists in taking a lot of photographs around an

01:38 object and then using a clever piece of software to stitch them all together and

01:43 build a 3D model. And the result is very good, the textures are very realistic.

01:49 So anyone can rotate the model, zoom into the object and explore the texture and

01:56 the 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 so we're

02:22 contributing to international solarship as well as our own teaching.