Monday, March 24, 2008

Mummy update

UofL team determines gender of science center’s mummy
A University of Louisville research team recently helped the Louisville Science Center learn more about an old friend — a 2,600-year-old friend.

Actually, the friend, a mummy called Then-Hotep, is more like a family member, having been one of the most popular attractions at the science center and its forerunner, the Natural History Museum, since the early part of the last century. But throughout all of those years, it kept one big secret: Nobody knew its gender.

Until now. Under the leadership of professor Aly Farag, director of the Computer Vision and Imaging Process lab at J.B. Speed School of Engineering, the UofL team applied technological and forensic expertise to verify that Then-Hotep is a female.