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A team at Stanford University, USA, has created 3D pictures of an ancient Egyptian mummy in unprecedented detail and revealed the face of the dead. The three-dimensional images, the result of high-resolution scans, reveal a girl of 4 to 5 years old with short, resin-coated black curls, a receding chin and an angular face reminiscent of her famous counterpart, King Tut. The scans are spectacular, marvelled Rebecca Fahrig, PhD, associate professor of radiology. The fact that we were able to get such high-resolution images is pretty cool. Some of the detail in the teeth is absolutely phenomenal. Ancient Egyptians developed the extensive process of mummification so that the bodies of the dead would not decompose in the afterlife and to give the spirit a body to guide them on their journey. These days, mummification would probably be considered overkill as an attempt to preserve the dead, and technological approaches are preferred. Throughout our lives photographs, videos, and audio tapes are taken that can keep a person's image, personality and work alive indefinitely. A host of computer based services have risen in recent years helping bereaved friends and relatives remember their loved ones in complete detail. According to the World Wide Cemetery, "The World Wide Web, shared globally by more than 30 million people, is an ideal place to announce the loss of someone we cherish and to erect a permanent monument to their memory. Such virtual monuments, unlike real ones, will not weather with the passage of time and can be visited easily by people from around the world." World Wide Cemetery is one of many virtual graveyards where tributes and photographs can be posted in order to remember a loved one, and visitors can leave notes and virtual flowers. Such services are likely to expand to allow the archiving of a person's life-story, a prospect beyond the ability of most home-users since data formats and computer hardware are constantly changing. Only a central service will have the resource to keep memories alive forever. But surviving in cyberspace is not without its emotional hazards to the living. Over a lifetime, personal data can be spread around the servers of the globe like a veil, so when Mark Roy's father suddenly died in 1999, he realised the need to prevent direct-mail companies sending mail to the deceased. "Getting mail for someone who has recently died in your family is upsetting," says Roy, "Every morning my mother would be inundated with mail addressed to my father, which would remind her he wasn't there any more." Roy's solution was The Bereavement Register, a database of deceased people which direct-mail companies can use to remove names from their databases and telemarketing files. Over 2,000 direct-mail companies have signed up and almost 60% of all direct mail sent in the UK uses the service. Roy's mission is to keep redundant and damaging information buried, while at Stanford, Fahrig and her colleagues took 60,000 scans of the mummy in order to bring a small part of Ancient Egypt back to life. The resulting mound of data produced the most detailed images of a mummy ever seen, with slices as narrow as 200 microns about the thickness of a business card. That a long-dead girl can be examined in more detail now than when she was alive is testament to the advances being made in computer technology. A mummy is a rare and fabulous object whose scientific value is beyond calculation. In the future, our physical deaths will only be the start of a long, and for some of us useful, online preservation; a virtual mummification for all. William Knight Aug 25, 2005 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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