I visited the British Museum when I was in London, but only for a day.  There is no way that the Museum can be seen in a day.   Next time I will schedule a week!  LOL

From their website I pulled up their informational section on mummies (The information and the pictures belong to the British Museum and you can find lots more fascinating history on their site!).  This section about mummies is especially interesting because all of the information they learned without ever unwrapping the mummy.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/default.aspx

Journey into the Mummy

Every one of the British Museum's mummies was once a living, breathing Egyptian going about their everyday life - working, eating, sleeping, getting ill, spending time with their family. Studying these people's mummies tells us a lot about their lives.

Meet an Egyptian man called Nesperennub. Although his mummy case has been in the Museum for over 100 years it has never been opened. This is because unwrapping mummies can badly damage them. So Nesperennub's secrets have remained hidden.

But now amazingly we have the technology to look inside Nesperennub's mummy without disturbing the wrappings at all.

Who was Nesperennub?

Nesperennub lived nearly three thousand years ago in Thebes. Thebes was one of the greatest cities in ancient Egypt and was full of temples and grand palaces. Nesperennub himself worked as a priest in the greatest of these temples, Karnak. He was also a fan-bearer to the King, so was an important man.

Nesperennub's wooden coffin has his face painted on the outside. He wears a wig, and his headband and collar are made of lotus petals. The hieroglyphs down the centre are a prayer asking for 'life, prosperity and health' for Nesperennub. Inside the coffin a goddess holds her arms open to protect his body.

 

The mummy case

Inside Nesperennub's coffin is a case containing his mummy. The case is made of cartonnage - layers of linen covered with glue or plaster, then left to set hard. It is brightly painted. At the top the scarab beetle with a falcon's head is the sun god Ra. His wings are stretching out over Nesperennub's chest. Under this the god Sokar is shown as a mummified falcon.

Lower down, a yellow dome with two feathers coming from the top is a sign of the god Osiris. Osiris and Ra both hold the key to life after death. The hieroglyphs below the knee tell us that Nesperennub and his father both worked at Karnak.

 

The mummy

Before being placed inside the cartonnage case, Nesperennub's body was wrapped in many layers to give the well-known mummy shape.

His body, arms and legs were first wrapped separately in narrow strips of linen. Small amulets - charms for luck - were put into the wrappings. Lastly, wide sheets were wrapped around him, and an outer cover called a shroud was put on and held in place by bands.

Hot runny resin (plant oil) was brushed over the surface of the wrappings. This helped the layers stick together, and stopped water from getting through to the corpse, which would rot it.

 

The skeleton

Nesperennub's body lies untouched inside his wrappings. His skeleton can tell us a lot about him. Firstly, his spine is in good shape, meaning that he wasn't too old when he died. This is checked out by looking at the plates in his skull, which show that he was probably about 40 - a normal age for Egyptian men to die.

There is a hole at the root of one of his teeth. This abscess probably gave him great pain, as there were no good remedies for these in ancient Egypt. There is also a strange small hole above his left eye, which doesn't look like a wound. He could have had an illness like cancer, or a brain tumour, which attacked the bones of his skull, and this might explain why he died.

The strange bowl

If you look carefully at the scan, you can see what looks like a rough bowl on the back of Nesperennub's head. This has never been found before in any other Egyptian mummy.

It was probably left there by mistake by the embalmers - the men who were mummifying him. Resin (melted plant oil) was poured over Nesperennub as he lay on the embalming bed, and the bowl was probably put under his head to catch the extra drips. As the resin cooled, it stuck the bowl on. The embalmers noticed this too late and tried to prise it off but couldn't. So they quickly wrapped him up, hoping that no-one would notice. And until now no-one has.

 

What did Nesperennub look like?

CT scans have been used to build a model of Nesperennub's face. Firstly a perfect copy of his skull was made. Pegs were put into this at exact points, each one marked according to how deep a person's flesh usually is at that place. Then clay was used to model Nesperennub's skin, muscles and eyes. The result is not 100% accurate, but is probably fairly close.

Nesperennub has no hair because, as a priest, he would have to go shaven-headed in the temple.

(See picture at the beginning of this article)

How to make a mummy

One of Nesperennub's embalmers says:
1. Take the brain out in pieces through the nose. Throw it away.
2. Cut a deep slash across the lower left stomach. Through this pull out the liver, lungs, stomach and intestines.
3. Dry these organs out, cover them with salt and resin, wrap them in linen, then put them back into the corpse. In earlier times, you would place the organs into special canopic jars, which were buried with the mummy.
4. Whatever you do, don't touch the heart. It is the soul of the person.

5. The eyes will shrivel up. Replace them with stone or glass eyes so the person can see in the afterlife.
6. Cover the body with natron salt and pack more inside. Leave it for about 40 days until all moisture is gone.
7. Coat the body with molten resin (plant oil) and fill up the empty spaces inside with rolls of cloth, spices or sawdust.
8. Wrap in layer after layer of linen strips and sheets.

Jewellery and amulets

Nesperennub wears a large ornament on his chest (known as a pectoral) in the shape of two outstretched wings. Close to his right collar bone is a stone scarab beetle called a 'heart scarab'. A group of amulets has been placed on his throat, including a wedjat eye. These and other amulets on his body are meant to protect him and give him power in the afterlife.

He has two leather pendants around his neck, and red leather tabs on his chest and neck. He also wears rings on the fingers of each hand, probably of gold. These may carry special markings to help him in the afterlife.

 

A mysterious snake

If you look closely just above Nesperennub's right eye, you can see a small cobra shape. It does not show up on normal X-rays so is probably made of wax. Ancient Egyptians thought that wax was magical.

Cobra amulets in this shape are very unusual, and we are not sure why this one was placed over Nesperennub's eye. Cobras decorated Egyptian kings' crowns, to show that the cobra goddess was protecting them. Perhaps this wax cobra means that the cobra goddess is looking after Nesperennub in the afterlife.