In September 2012, the British Museum's most famous natural mummy
was taken out of the building
for the first time in over a hundred years
One of the museum's oldest humans
was about to be examined with the newest technology
And the results would be a revelation
Gebelein man is one of a small group
six or seven bodies of this kind
which are in the British Museum
All of these came from the site of Gebelein in the 1890's
Gebelein man himself was put on display straight away
and he's always attracted tremendous attention
We are about to take Gebelein man to the common hospital
to have him CT scanned
and we hope to find out a lot more about his past biology
his past health, how old he was when he died
to get a better understanding of what it was like
to live and die in pre-dynastic Egypt
His preservation is entirely due to natural processes
You would call a body like this a natural mummy
This is the area where you can see the scapular
because there is a dent in it
And I'm not sure what's happening here
so that would be an area to have a closer look
I won't have to talk to him
and I won't have to ask him questions
and won't have to give an injection
and also he won't hopefully feel claustrophobic
As far as I am aware pre-dynastic mummies have never been CT scanned before
Is it possible to look at the left scapular
We found out that most of his bones appear to have just fused
the head of his humerus and the head of his femur
both of which suggest he's just finished growing
and he probably died between the ages of 18 and 21
In the more traditional Egyptian mummy
all the internal organs have been taken out during embalming
sometimes put back in after they were preserved
But you will not ever see the brain because they didn't keep that
In the case of Gebelein man we would hope
to see all of these organs preserved just by drying
We have teams excavating in Egypt and in Northern Sudan
every year for months at a time
excavating both the towns people lived in
and also the places they buried their dead
There's a real focus at the moment into
trying to investigate what life was like for the ordinary Egyptians
This looks structural to me, see the way there's that line there
So much of the study of ancient Egypt
has been about the temples and the tombs of kings
and the gold masks you had on the burials of pharaohs and so on
but that really was the very small part of the population
maybe less than 1%
what about all the ordinary people, the farmers that lived along the Nile
What was their health like?
What was their life like?
A month later the British Museum team
has come to the Natural History Museum
to see the first results of the scans of Gebelein Man
Thanks very much for coming over
this was originally going to be a very quiet little tête a tête
sort of scientists to scientists sort of thing
but it's sort of grown a little bit which is great
and we are very pleased that you could all make it here
Ground-breaking real time visualisation technology
pioneered in Sweden
is now installed on a new autopsy table
which can be used by the public
Now if we actually take a slice from this direction
now look down inside the body
we'll see a lot of the soft tissue
Well I think it will be a fantastic tool to bring into the galleries
Our visitors will be able to explore this mummy
who's been known in our galleries for over a century
And as we all learn at school
the Egyptians took the brain out through the nose
as part of that artificial mummification process
so this fantastic tool which is like a virtual surgeon's knife
taking away the dome of the skull
and then the ability to see inside and the preservation of a brain
which is what over five thousand years old?
Six thousand
Based on the way he's been treated
he should date to about 3600 BC maybe 3700
so he's old and it's so neat to apply this new technology
to something just this old and to get these results
to see potentially what he might have eaten on his last day
I mean it's really very exciting
But what did happen on Gebelein's last day?
He was young and robust, so what or who killed him?
The skeleton and soft tissue now revealed with digital technology
provide evidence for how this man died thousands of years ago
We did notice that a lot of the rips had been broken all down kind of a line
We can see that the one below this area is quite interesting
the fact that you got fragments
which are still floating in soft tissue
This shoulder bone had a big indentation in it
the rib immediately below also looks like it's been punctured
shattered into fragments which have
embedded themselves into the muscle tissue
and they're still embedded there today
The fracture pattern suggests that this was done when the bone was fresh
all of which points to him being stabbed in the back
It's very likely that what we've had on display
in the galleries for many many years
was the victim of a murder
and it's only now that we're truly finding out
who this person was