Laboratory Equipment

Modern Cat Mummy Sheds Light on Ramses II

Some millennia ago, Yes might have been the object of worship in ancient Egypt. Today, Yes – a modern, domestic house cat – is helping shed light on the practice of mummification and the lives of ancients, such as Ramses II, the most celebrated pharaoh of Egypt.

Emerging from a study looking to determine whether Ramses II had ankylosing spondylitis (AS), a chronic inflammatory disease of the spine which makes vertebrae look dense in radiographs, the study of Yes started when a graduate student asked The Univ. of Western Ontario’s professor Andrew Nelson to mummify his pet, who passed away from pancreatitis.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/02/modern-cat-mummy-sheds-light-ramses-ii

LEGOs Used to Conserve Ancient Mummy Case

Thanks to an ambitious conservation project and some tiny pieces of plastic, the ancient Egyptian mummy case of Hor is now on display in the Fitzwilliam Museum, at Cambridge Univ. The conservation of the cartonnage mummy case was undertaken with the assistance of the Department of Engineering, who helped construct clever frames to support the delicate case during conservation and a new display case with internal supports using LEGO.

The mummy case was found in the Ramesseum at Thebes in 1896. The gilded wooden face had been torn out by robbers and the mummy removed. Cartonnage is a uniquely Egyptian material, often only a few millimeters thick, consisting of layers of plaster, linen and glue. It is remarkably rigid but also very sensitive to humidity. At some point Hor had been exposed to damp conditions and had sagged dramatically around the chest and face. This caused structural problems and also serious cracking and instability in the painted decoration. There had been some attempts at repair and restoration, most probably in the cartonnage’s early years in the Museum.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/09/legos-used-conserve-ancient-mummy-case

Cancer Found in Ancient Mummy Caused by Genetics

A professor from American Univ. in Cairo says the discovery of prostate cancer in a 2,200-year-old mummy indicates the disease was caused by genetics, not environment. The genetics-environment question is key to understanding cancer.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-cancer-found-in-ancient-mummy-caused-by-genetics-013012.aspx

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DNA from mummified crocodiles helped reveal that the Nile crocodile is really two distinct species. Read the full story here. 

Photo courtesy of John Thorbjarnarson, Wildlife Conservation Society.