Considering her long life and even longer afterlife, it's not surprising that Westminster College's Egyptian mummy turns out to look more like a grandmummy.

	Westminster College A reconstruction of what Pesed, a 2,300-year-old- mummy, might have looked like in life. Click photo for larger image.

In a newly constructed bust, Pesed, a 2,300-year-old mummy that was donated to the New Wilmington college in 1885 by a former student turned missionary, appears lined by age and the Egyptian sun. Researchers yesterday unveiled the results of their efforts to put a face to her name.

Reconstructed mummy busts are usually sculpted with a surface as smooth as a baby's bottom, noted Sam Farmerie, the college's curator of cultural artifacts.

"Think about an 85-year-old lady and all the wrinkles the individual has," he said. "That's what so different about this bust."

Pesed is thought to have been born around 350 BC and to have died anywhere from 55 to 70 years later. She had severe dental abcesses, so it's possible that she died from a spreading infection, Dr. Farmerie said.

Her remains and hundreds of other mummies were found in the 1880s in the ancient city of Akhmim, Egypt, about 300 miles south of Cairo. Many were sold to tourists.

In the United States, such a find "becomes a national treasure and we put it in a museum," Dr. Farmerie noted. But at that time, Egyptians "looked at the mummies and other artifacts as a way to enhance their national treasury."

Sold for $8 and shipped to Pennsylvania for $5, Pesed would become a part of college folklore. Rumors that her decapitated head was left in a dorm room as a prank were unfounded, Dr. Farmerie said. "We know from the last X-ray there was no decapitation," he said.

The stories that her entire body had been found in co-eds' beds in the early 1900s are more plausible. In fact, Dr. Farmerie said, "I am personally aware of an [abortive] attempt to snitch the mummy about 25 years ago."

Last summer, researchers led by Egyptologist Jonathan Elias, director of the Harrisburg-based Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium, took multiple CT images of Pesed with an eye to seeing what her face might have looked like.

Hundreds of scans were sent to colleagues at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, for a technique called rapid prototyping, Dr. Elias explained.

"You can edit the scan data and remove any information that is extraneous to the skull," he said. "In the case of a mummy, it would be wrappings or resin or other objects that might have been put into the wrappings.

What's left are images of bare bone, and the computer can rebuild them into a three-dimensional construct. Even better, a special printer uses plaster-of-paris and fiberglass, instead of ink, to squirt out a model of the skull.

"It's allowed to set up and a sculptor can go to work on that object as if it was a real skull," Dr. Elias said. "It's a fantastic process."

Mummies usually have some flesh on their bones, but the drying process and resin coatings significantly altered appearance. Even in ancient times, the dessicated remains that were subsequently wrapped bore little resemblance to the living person, he said.

Also, funerary masks and coffin portraits of the time were idealized, and do not do the deceased justice, Dr. Elias said.

The model of Pesed's skull was sent to Frank Bender, a forensic sculptor in Philadelphia who has worked for the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

Based on studies of how much flesh a certain thickness of bone supports, "you reconstruct the tissue volumes in clay and get a reasonably similar appearance to how the person would have appeared in life," Dr. Elias said.

For now, Pesed's bust will remain white while the researchers learn more about the diversity of Akhmim's population.

"We didn't have enough information to pigment the portrait," the Egyptologist said. Plus, "We just like the minimalistic approach."

The scans also revealed that a three-inch disc in the wrappings under her left arm was decorated with the Eye of Horus, which could indicate an attempt to ward off pain or disease as part of a "magical protocol," Dr. Elias said. Another mummy of the period that he has examined has one, too, in the same place.

The research consortium has scanned about nine mummies from the Akhmim site and has several more scheduled. Visitors will be able to view the reconstruction of Pesed's head in Westminster's Mack Science Library, near her mummy.

"As soon as I get around to building or buying a pedestal, it will be on permanent display," Dr. Farmerie said.

More info

For more information about the research consortium, go to www.amscresearch.com. To learn more about Pesed, go to www.westminster.edu/mummy.