Scientists to use NHS scan on mummy

Nesperennub, a male body enclosed in a linen and plaster case within a 1.5m-long coffin, will have a whole-body computerised tomography (CT) scan at University College Hospital on Monday to see if it will yield any more of its secrets.

Experts from the British Museum asked for Nesperennub to be scanned at UCH as the hospital uses the latest CT technology that allows individual images to be created at a thickness of 0.6mm.

Two radiographers from the hospital will take about four hours over a series of detailed scans on behalf of experts from the museum's Department of Egyptology.

Advances in CT technology allow for an even more detailed examination of the contents of the coffin and experts from the British Museum are particularly interested in knowing more about the jewellery around its neck, believed to have been put on just before burial.

Fiona Henderson, lead superintendent radiographer for UCH, said: "This CT scanner was installed just two years ago when the new hospital opened and it provides incredibly detailed images, generating up to 6,000 images of the body.

"Up to 36 patients per day are scanned using this CT scanner but this will be the first time it has had such an old and illustrious 'patient'.

"We have to use CT scanning for the mummy as there needs to be water in a body in order to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and a body that is this old will be completely dry."

Nesperennub first visited England in 1899, after his coffin had been discovered at Luxor, the site of the ancient city of Thebes, in the 1890s.

The mummy first visited the trust in 2004 to have a CT but subsequent improvements in technology mean more could potentially be discovered.