This is Scientific American 60 Second Science.

I'm Cynthia Graber.

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Mummies.

They're the stuff of horror movies and happy archaeologists.

Now the American Association of

Anatomists have turned their attention to mummies, they've devoted the

entire latest issue of their journal the anatomical record to the subject. Papers in

the addition cover topics such as the bog bodies of Northern Europe, the

intestinal contents of a Korean mummy, a case study for an Egyptian mummy with a

prosthetic toe, and a code of ethics for research with ancient human remains.

Most mummy research is done on actual code of ethics for research with ancient human remains.

Most mummy research is done on actual discovered remains,

but some investigations try to reconstruct

mummification techniques to figure out just how ancient peoples did it.

For example, in 1994 researchers at the University of

Maryland, Baltimore attempted to recreate Egyptian mummification using a

donated cadaver. In a paper in the new mummy issue, scientists conducted a variety of scans on that

cadaver to see if they could figure out the process without asking the researchers who did the

1994 work.

They determined that the body was male, likely elderly, and probably a modern professional in the quote

middle or elite social class. The authors also described the incisions and the

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