Scenes from the past: multidetector CT study of gallbladder stones in a wrapped Egyptian mummy.

ABSTRACT

A whole-body examination was performed with multidetector computed tomography (CT) of a completely wrapped Egyptian mummy from the collection at the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy. The mummy dates from the Eighteenth Dynasty. Although embalmment of the deceased man should have included evisceration in accordance with his social rank, no canopic jars containing internal organs had been found at the discovery of his tomb, and at CT, all the organs were found to have desiccated inside the body. Numerous calcified stones that were incidentally identified in the gallbladder had attenuation characteristics indicative of a predominant bile pigment content. This case demonstrates the superior capabilities of multidetector CT for the noninvasive study of embalmed bodies. The intrinsic capacity of CT for depicting the density of materials allowed not only the identification of the gallbladder stones but also their characterization.