For years it has been a quiet mystery in a glass case at the Walters Art Museum, where it rested a few feet from a 4,000-year-old coffin in what is known as the Afterlife Room.
But yesterday the 5-foot, 2,900-year-old mummy traveled by truck to University of Maryland Medical Center for its first-ever CT scan to see whether scientists can learn more about it - including whether "it" is a he or a she.
For the mummy and its retinue, the biggest challenge was the same one facing everyone negotiating Baltimore's midday traffic: getting there in one piece. "It's very, very, very fragile," said Regine Schulz, the Walters' curator of ancient art and director of international curatorial relations.
With that in mind, a crew of curators and staffers spent two painstaking hours packing the mummy in bubble wrap and tissue paper, then lowering it into a custom pine box, complete with foam bed, for the mile-long trip.
"I approach everything like it was an explosive," said Michael McKee, the senior art handler at the Walters who coordinated the move. "It doesn't help to be nervous."
The University of Maryland School of Medicine approached the Walters several months ago about scanning the mummy so doctors can discuss the results at the school's annual pathology conference this spring.
The gathering usually includes an examination of the cause of death of a historical figure. Past subjects have included Abraham Lincoln, Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Booker T. Washington. This year's mystery is Akhenaten, a mysterious monotheistic pharaoh.
With a mummy available at the Walters, medical school officials thought scanning it might help unravel some ancient Egyptian medical mysteries.
"It might help us see what diseases they had, infectious and otherwise, along with how they preserved these bodies and what problems there were with preservation," said Dr. Philip Mackowiak, chief of the medical service at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center, a professor of medicine at UM and organizer of the conference.
The gathering, which is open to the public, is scheduled for 1 p.m. May 2 at Davidge Hall on the medical school campus.
On Monday, UM radiologists also scanned a precious container from the Walters designed for religious artifacts, as well as an Egyptian "corn mummy," a doll-sized human figure made from soil and clay that might have been used in annual religious ceremonies.
