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CT Scanner Reveals Mummy With No Torso At Field Museum

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A borrowed CT scanner has uncovered, and suggested a solution, for the mystery of the mummy's missing middle at the Field Museum.

As WBBM Newsradio 780's John Cody reports, Genesis Medical Imaging lent scientists at the museum a CT scanner for a week, to scan all 40 Egyptian mummies without expensive, dangerous, one-at-a-time trips to a hospital imaging unit.

LISTEN: Newsradio 780's John Cody reports

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Field Museum conservator J.P. Brown says the scan revealed one mummy has only head and legs inside the sarcophagus. The mummy was the victim of grave robbers 2,400 years ago, and a Good Samaritan a century later.

"Subsequently, the remains were found by someone who was presumably more pious than the tomb robbers, and re-bound in the coffin, and re-buried," Brown said.

Genesis Medical chief executive officer Robert Dakessian says he lent the expansive CT scanner as payback for all the boyhood days he spent with Egyptian mummies in the Field Museum.

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