Invasive versus Non Invasive Methods Applied to Mummy Research: Will This Controversy Ever Be Solved?

Abstract

Advances in the application of non invasive techniques to mummified remains have shed new light on past diseases. The virtual inspection of a corpse, which has almost completely replaced classical autopsy, has proven to be important especially when dealing with valuable museum specimens. In spite of some very rewarding results, there are still many open questions. Non invasive techniques provide information on hard and soft tissue pathologies and allow information to be gleaned concerning mummification practices (e.g., ancient Egyptian artificial mummification). Nevertheless, there are other fields of mummy studies in which the results provided by non invasive techniques are not always self-explanatory. Reliance exclusively upon virtual diagnoses can sometimes lead to inconclusive and misleading interpretations. On the other hand, several types of investigation (e.g., histology, paleomicrobiology, and biochemistry), although minimally invasive, require direct contact with the bodies and, for this reason, are often avoided, particularly by museum curators. Here we present an overview of the non invasive and invasive techniques currently used in mummy studies and propose an approach that might solve these conflicts.

Discover the anatomy of the mummies: how imaging techniques contribute to understanding disease in the past

“…Paleoradiography has been widely acknowledged as a crucial non-invasive method for studying ancient human remains (Lynnerup, 2007(Lynnerup, , 2009(Lynnerup, , 2010O'Brien et al, 2009;Beckett, 2014;Cox, 2015;Lynnerup and Rühli, 2015;Moissidou et al, 2015;Rühli, 2015Rühli, , 2015Garvin and Stock, 2016;Giovannetti et al, 2016Giovannetti et al, , 2022Habicht et al, 2016;Licata et al, 2019;Nystrom, 2020), and several guidelines have been issued on its use (Panzer et al, 2015(Panzer et al, , 2017(Panzer et al, , 2018(Panzer et al, , 2019Tanti et al, 2021). Moreover, Cramer and coworkers (Cramer et al, 2018) performed a systematic review to summarize artificial changes and detectable paleopathologies diagnosed by CT scans.…”

3d Reconstruction of the Ancient Egyptian Mummy Skeleton From the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (I,1 1240)

“…The modern technologies, such as computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and others, allow us to study artifacts in a non-destructive way on a fundamentally new scientific level (Moissidou D. et al 2015). In this work, the technological infrastructure of the NRC "Kurchatov Institute" provided the tomography scans of some intact Egyptian mummies and their fragments, as well as the animal mummies from the collections of the Pushkin Museum (Yacishina E.B.…”

Significant advances of ethical considerations in biomolecular archaeometry studies of human remains and related materials. The specific case of mummies hair characterization

“…Moreover, the debate on the use of invasive versus non-invasive methods is still open [2]. Some information can only be obtained after sampling and analysis by destructive techniques such as radiocarbon dating and biomolecular archaeometry.…”