“Hearing the voice” of a 3,000-year-old mummy. This could be the description of one of the scenes in any film full of special effects, but the scene is very real and represents what a team of researchers has achieved using computerized tomography technology.
The priest Nesyamun was 50 years old when he died. He lived during the reign of Pharaoh Ramses XI, was mummified three thousand years ago and his remains were deposited in The Necropolis of Thebes. He has been at the Leeds Museum in England since 1823 and it has now been possible to reproduce his voice, thanks to the work of German and English researchers.
Professor David Howard, who heads the electronic engineering department at the University of London, Royal Holloway, and the rest of the team they were able to map the vocal tract, using advanced computed tomography techniques and recreate the priest’s throat in 3D, which allowed them to hear, through a computer, what would be Nesyamun’s vocal record if he were alive in the sarcophagus.
“We heard a vowel-like sound that would come out of Nesyamun’s mouth if his mouth were in the current position and if he were alive,” explained David Howard.
The technology, but also the good conservation of the mummy, helped the scientists. The sound you hear is electronic, says Howard, and it was achieved taking into account the position in which the priest was mummified, with his head tilted back and his mouth open, which is unusual in the mummification process. The register obtained is similar to the sounds of the vowels in the English words “bed” and “bad”, producing a kind of groan.
“If this sound were produced by Nesyamun, the air in the lung was expelled out through the larynx, where his vocal cords would vibrate to create the same effect”, explains the teacher and one of those responsible for the study.
According to the expert, the dimensions of Nesyamun’s larynx and vocal tract indicate that the his voice would be a little higher than that of the man of today.
An achievement that opens new windows of opportunities to better understand the past. Archaeologist John Schofield and co-author of the study even speaks of “enthusiasm” and the “extra dimension” that it can represent to museum visitors. “The idea of going to a museum and hearing a three thousand year old voice is the kind of thing that people can remember for a long time,” he said, quoted by The Guardian.
After obtaining this voice, the research team wants more. “We want to try to develop a computer model that allows us to move [o trato vocal] and form different vowel sounds and, hopefully, finally words, “said Schofield. The approach that the researchers applied can, moreover, be applied to other preserved remains, such as those of the Iron Age, added the expert.
Despite this record that they managed to produce does not correspond to “the sound that the priest would reproduce in life”, the archaeologist explains that it is through him that he is able to “create other sounds that may have been produced during his life”.
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