Neswaiu Mummy Goes Digital At Stockholm Museum

Stockholms Medelhavsmuseet museum has taken its display and research of the Egyptian mummys to the next level, and their latest exhibit sees the mummy of Neswaiu, son of Tekeretdjehuty is the latest to get some extra attention with the aid of 3D scanning technology. It has taken years of careful scanning to create, but now visitors can digitally unwrap an Egyptian mummy.

Using an interactive touch table, you can explore this 2300 year old mummy, something that has never been done on this level of detail before. Not only have the introduced 3D scanning and touch screen technology, but also 3D printing. When the museum digitally recreated the mummy using tomography and 3D photogrammetry techniques, they also discovered a golden amulet beneath the layers of wrapping. Unable to take it out with damaging the exterior, the amulet was 3D printed and now visitors can hold the 3D-printed copy along side using the touch display.

“3D digitization technology enables us to describe the health and fate of individuals, as well as ancient Egyptians’ beliefs about the afterlife,” said Medelhavsmuseet director Sofia Häggman. “Our new exhibition focuses on the human aspect, while also offering new perspectives on Egypt.”

“It is truly inspiring to see how technology, now so much more powerful yet so accessible, can offer unprecedented new ways to experience, explore and learn about our past,” said Tatjana Dzambazova from Autodesk, the company that helped the museum with the scanning.

Thomas Rydell from the Interactive Institute Swedish ICT added: “In this project we worked with mummies, but the same methods could be used on large variety of objects, such as natural history objects and other historical artefacts.”

Touch screen, interactive 3D models, 3D printed items that you can handle, all sounds pretty cool to me, I was at an Egyptian exhibit in Glasgow just a few days ago and you couldn’t touch anything, maybe if I’m ever in Stockholm I’ll check this new exhibit out.

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