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Mummified boy inspires art
Valentine Low, Evening Standard20 May 2008
The mummified body of a boy who died nearly 2,000 years ago is on show in London today in an artwork where modern science meets ancient burial rituals.
The child died, aged about 18 months, in a village near Cairo during the period 1,900 years ago when the Romans ruled Egypt.
Now the internal workings of his body have been displayed at a West End art gallery alongside his mummified remains.
A hospital scanner was used to produce a three-dimensional representation of his body and its internal architecture, which was then turned into a piece by artist Angela Palmer. The artist produced 111 ink drawings on glass, each representing a cross-section through the child's body, which she put together to make a 3-D image.
The 3ft mummy was discovered by Flinders Petrie in 1888. Since then it has been kept at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Palmer, a former journalist, said: "Over the past two years I have watched the child's body slowly and intriguingly turn into a threedimensional-shape in my studio using details from the 2,500 scans from the John Radcliffe [hospital].
"I began to feel an eerie closeness to the child and felt compelled to visit the tomb where he had lain for nearly 2,000 years before being taken to Oxford."
• Unravelled is at Waterhouse & Dodd, 26 Cork Street, until 12 June.
