Scientists at the University of London, York University and the Leeds Museum in England have managed to recreate the voice of a man who lived three thousand years ago. Nesyamun was a priest between 1099 and 1069 BC, in Egypt of Pharaoh Ramses XI.
In order to reproduce the voice of the priest, whose mummy is currently on display at the Leeds City Museum, the scientists used a 3D printer to recreate Nesyamun’s vocal tract (the place where the sound of the voice is filtered).
In an explanation of the process, revealed during the week in the scientific journal “Scientific Reports”, the team said that the mummy was taken to a local university hospital, where it was subjected to a series of CT scans, from which it was possible to digitally produce the vocal tract of Nesyamun and reproduce it through printing. The mold printed by the researchers recreated the Egyptian priest’s larynx.
“What we did was create the sound of Nesyamun, while he was in the sarcophagus,” said David Howard, co-author of the study and head of the Department of Electronic Engineering at the University of London, quoting by the British newspaper “The Guardian”, which released the concerned, to listen below.
The vocal tract filters the sound produced by the air that has passed through the larynx and results in the voice, exclusive for each person. The position of different components of the vocal tract can produce specific words or other vocalizations.
The next step in the investigation is to create a way to make the recreated voices form sentences.
The priest is said to have died at around 50 years old, apparently indicating the victim of an allergic reaction, possibly caused by an insect bite on his tongue. The priest’s mummy, currently in the City Museum of Leeds, England, escaped a bombing raid in 1941 that destroyed not only the museum’s structure, but many of the artifacts that were there.
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