From the Archives #14 | Kelsey Museum

https://kelseymuseum.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/from-the-archives-14/
On 10/26/16 11:50, cperson01 wrote:

BY SEBASTIAN ENCINA, Museum Collections Manager, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

It’s October, when vampires and werewolves and mummies go out in the cold, dark nights, scaring folks for candy and treats. The Kelsey’s own mummies know a thing or two about wandering outside as well. Just earlier this month, the cat mummy, grain mummy, and one of our bird mummies made the trek to the University of Michigan Hospital to get CT scanned (see Kelsey blog post by Suzanne Davis, 10/18/2016).

These three are not the only mummies from our collections that have made such a journey. In 2002, curators Janet Richards and Terry Wilfong, along with student Grant Martin (who initiated this scanning endeavor), took our child mummy (KM1971.2.179) to the hospital system to be scanned as well. This month’s From the Archives highlights this fun and unique adventure. The archives at the Kelsey hold not only the story as written by Terry and Janet, found in the Spring 2002 Kelsey newsletter, but also correspondence, reports, and other ephemera associated with the event.

On display this month are a scan of the 2002 newsletter, where Terry and Janet detail their middle of the night adventures driving a hearse and being welcomed by the staff of the hospital excited to see the VIP guest. Along with their tale, we present two pages from the report written by Martin Grant, where he explains some of the findings from the scanning, including some visuals of the scans themselves and the making of the resin skull (currently on exhibit in the Upjohn Exhibition Wing).

Thrown into the mix is the original outgoing receipt for this transaction (collections managers document all movement of objects leaving and arriving at the Kelsey). It is humorous, in a way, to read the simple note on why the object is leaving. “[O]ne mummy of a child from Kelsey Museum collections for scanning in UHospital after hours.” It is written so nonchalantly, as if a regular occurrence for us. This simple phrasing hides the excitement and buzz from the experience, and the depth of knowledge we acquired as a result.

This was not the first time this mummy received such attention. Many years earlier, the mummy was x-rayed, and that image is shared here as well. As much as this photograph shows us, developing technologies still offer us a greater chance to learn about our artifacts. Maybe in another 10 years, a new machine will come about that will reveal even more about our artifacts, and our mummy will go off in the night again.

Click to view slideshow.
Filed under: From the Archives

--   Sent from my monopoly-free Linux system.