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North Shore staff says mummy not a she but a he

North Shore staff says mummy not a she but a he
By Jeremy Walsh

A 2,600-year-old mummy named Lady Hor was hiding a surprising secret under layers of aging gauze: a penis.

This revelation was the first major finding by radiologists at North Shore University Hospital Tuesday, where staff put four of the preserved ancient Egyptian bodies through their high-resolution CT scanner on behalf of the Brooklyn Museum.

“We thought it was a woman because he had no beard,” said Edward Bleiberg, curator of Egyptian art at the Brooklyn Museum, referring to the representations of facial hair frequently found on the coffins of ancient Egyptian men. “Most deceased males tried to associate themselves with Osiris when they died. It’s actually going to revise our idea about how you can tell.”

Hor, whose name was inscribed on the elaborately decorated burial container without any indication of gender, arrived at the Manhasset hospital early Monday morning along with a 3,000-year-old prince known as Pasebakhaienipet, the Count of Thebes; a 2,500-year-old priestess named Thothirdes; and an anonymous male mummy roughly 1,700 years old.

Speaking in a hospital boardroom with the mummies resting in shipping crates in the corners, doctors and museum staff said they hoped the cutting-edge scanning technology would help determine the deceased Egyptians’ history of disease and possibly the cause of their deaths.

Hor was remarkably well-preserved under the plaster-hardened, painted linen shell known as a cartonnage, with enough soft tissue intact to easily determine his gender.

“They look very much like the living folks we scan here all the time,” radiologist Jessie Chusid said of the cross-section images the scans produced. But he and other hospital staff who queued outside the boardroom for a glimpse were clearly fascinated to have the archaeological treasures at their workplace.

“To see what looks like a museum opened up in front of us was really amazing,” he said.

When asked if he worried about falling under any ancient curses, Bleiberg said the most common curse the ancient Egyptians placed on those who entered a tomb was for the trespasser not to inherit his father’s office.

“I personally am not worried about that,” he said.

The Brooklyn Museum, which has had the mummies since the 1930s, has been X-raying them since that decade, Bleiberg said.

The first CT scans on the remains were performed in the 1980s, he said, noting the process took much longer and produced poorer images. The museum hopes to have Hor and Thothirdes, the two mummies whose bodies are still shrouded, back on display June 30. Images from the CT scans will be available on the museum’s Web site.

Reach reporter Jeremy Walsh by e-mail at jewalsh@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.