San Francisco, CA. The Legion of Honor, one of San Francisco’s fine-art museums, has enlisted the help of a medical technology company to help examine mummies. As the museum’s website puts it, “An interdisciplinary team of scientists, Egyptologists, physicians, and museum curators and conservators has learned more about how these embalmed individuals lived, died, and were prepared for eternity.” The museum adds, “The resulting data have been studied by Jonathan Elias of the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium, who offered much of the interpretation seen in the exhibition.”
The team subjected the mummies to 3D CT scans under the direction of Rebecca Fahrig and Kerstin Müller of Stanford University Medical School’s department of radiology. The San Jose-based medical solutions company Anatomage supplied 3D image rendering and video and—most impressive for museum goers—an interactive virtual dissection table, on which visitors can slice and dice the simulated mummy images.
The mummies investigated include that of Irethorrou, a priest from a family living in Akhmim in middle Egypt about 2,600 years ago, and that of a woman traditionally known as “Hatason,” perhaps 500 years older.
The exhibit at the Legion of Honor runs through August 26. Find more information and a video at the museum’s website.
On a related note, the Legion of Honor building, originally the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, is a full-scale replica of the French Pavilion at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, which in turn, as Wikipedia describes, was a three-quarter-scale version of the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris.
I visited the morning after the terrible events in France, and you may not be able to see the details in the nearby photo, but on the left on the base of the statue of Joan of Arc on horseback is a hand-lettered sign with this inscription:
“Fear nothing”
Jehanne La Pucelle
Priez Pour
Les Victimes De Nice
