“By utilising the capabilities of neutron imaging we were able to study the sealed animal coffins non-invasively and further our knowledge on the fascinating world of animal mummification.” stated Dr Daniel O’Flynn, X-ray Imaging Scientist at the British Museum. They brought six of these boxes to the ISIS Neutron and Muon source, to perform neutron tomography on our IMAT beamline. To pierce through the dense metals with better effect, the team decided to try using neutrons. However, due to high content of dense metals such as copper and lead in the box structures themselves, the images of their contents were unclear. Starting with X-ray imaging, they revealed that several of the boxes contained some ancient remnants. Researchers at the museum have performed imaging studies of these animal coffins to investigate their contents in a non-destructive way. The British museum houses one of thes e c ollections which includes a set of 2500 year old animal coffins depicting lizard/eel-like figures. Many of these boxes are now in museums across the world. These were placed in temples (probably for religious purposes) and eventually stored in labyrinthine underground buildings, which have preserved the votive boxes for millennia. Many of these animals would have been placed either inside statues of the animal or in coffins with a depiction of the animal on it. F rom securing your pet a place in the afterlife, to providing sacrifices to the gods (like the goddess ISIS) the mummification of animals was common practice in ancient Egypt.
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