SLSC Child Mummy

In 2005, Al Wiman, a Vice President at the Saint Louis Science Center, assembled a scientific team of detectives to explore the mystery of a child mummy in the museum's collection. Scientists at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, used computed tomography -- or CT -- scanning to create an incredible three-dimensional portrait of the child mummy. Through the CT models, radiocarbon dating and DNA tests, researchers learned the child mummy, a male, died when he was between six and nine months old. He lived some time between 30 BC and 130 AD, when Egypt was a province of the Roman Empire. The mummy's mitochondrial DNA indicates he may have been of European descent. Scientists were not able to determine a cause of death, but they did know the child was probably well-loved, because CT scans revealed that amulets, or charms, had been carefully placed inside the wrappings to protect him in the afterlife.

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