Spanish Television discovers in 4K 'The secret history of the mummies' from the Archaeological Museum

The documentary, co-produced by Story Producciones, will offer the complete process of the investigation of four MAN mummies from a high-resolution computed tomography.

RTVE coproduces with Story Producciones The secret history of mummies, a documentary that will show on La 2 the research process of four mummies from the collection of the National Archaeological Museum (MAN). The study, which is based on a pioneering virtual autopsy carried out at the Quirónsalud University Hospital in Madrid, shows that one of the mummies was a priest of Imhotep and a doctor to the pharaoh. The results were presented this Tuesday at an event at the MAN.

During the presentation, the director of La 2, Juan Manuel Hidalgo, congratulated the team at the National Archaeological Museum and the Quirónsalud University Hospital in Madrid “for exceeding the expectations” that existed when this project was presented. “Now, we have the responsibility of doing dissemination work for the general public,” he assured, while underlining the suitability of this work, as it fits into the type of programming of La 2, being a quality project, with a television run and being a new product in Spain.

“We are 100% satisfied and waiting to see the completion of the documentary, which promises to be more than interesting,” he concluded.

The director of the MAN, Andrés Carretero, has highlighted the work of the National Archaeological Museum in "searching for the most advanced technologies to improve the study of the museum's collections." In this sense, he has highlighted the “magnificent opportunity” that has been given for collaboration with the Quirónsalud University Hospital in Madrid, since thanks to its technology, “some of the assumptions that were made about the analyzed mummies have been confirmed.”

Likewise, he has pointed out that both the research process and the results will be captured in a documentary that features, as a novelty, the work of a forensic sculptor who has reconstructed the appearance of the Nespamedu mummy's face.

The conservators Carmen Pérez Díe and Teresa Gómez Espinosa also participated in the presentation; and Vicente Martínez Vega, Silvia Badillo and Javier Carrascoso, from the Diagnostic Imaging service of the Quirónsalud Madrid University Hospital. All of them have detailed the different steps that have been taken during the year of research, as well as the importance of the results obtained.

4K images and 3D recreations

The documentary will show how the study of these mummies was carried out, from when they left the museum until the CT results were obtained and interpreted by doctors and archaeologists. With this starting point, what life was like in Egypt for the analyzed mummies is reconstructed, with special emphasis on the character of Nespamedu.

Never before seen 4K images of the great monuments of Egypt, interviews with the participants, 3D recreations and the reconstruction of the faces of these mummies are the ingredients of a documentary that shows the most important study carried out to date on the MAN mummies with non-invasive techniques.

A year of research and testing

The four mummies from the National Archaeological Museum (three Egyptian and one Guanche) were subjected to a high-resolution computed tomography a year ago at the Quirónsalud Madrid University Hospital. After carrying out the tests, a huge amount of work began to reconstruct the images, three-dimensional reconstruction and research carried out by MAN archaeologists and Egyptologists and radiologists.

The results have confirmed that one of the mummies was Nespamedu and the radiological study has allowed us to discover 25 pieces hidden under its bandages. Furthermore, thanks to the images obtained and anthropological studies, it has been possible to establish data on the gender, age and lifestyle of all the mummies, as well as the different mummification techniques to which the bodies were subjected. Two of the mummies are women and one of them shows symptoms of having been pregnant.

The study of the Canarian mummy, one of the best preserved from the Guanche culture, shows that it maintains all its organs and was subjected to a careful mummification process. With this, the research confirms the theory that the Guanche mummies were not eviscerated, something that does happen with the Egyptian ones.