Summer Decker and Jonathan Ford, professors at the Keck School of Medicine, are frequently contacted by surgeons and physicians from all over the country for help on tough patient cases.

“What we get is all of the cases from around the region that are really, really complex — people don’t know how to fix them, so they send them to us, which makes it very much like solving puzzles every day,” Decker said.

But as a change of pace, the California Science Center reached out to the two to produce scans of Nes-Hor and Nes-Min, two mummies preserved for over 2,200 years. Over Martin Luther King weekend, they used their highest resolution computed tomography scanner and took about 25,000 images, all without unwrapping the bodies or fully removing them from their coffins.

The pair produced digital and physical 3D models of the two ancient Egyptian priests for a new exhibit at the California Science Center. The exhibit, “Mummies of the World: The Exhibition,” showcases preserved human and animal mummies from around the globe until Sept. 7.

Their process involved using devices like CT scanners that take hundreds of “slices” of an area of interest, which are then compiled to produce digital image models.

“From there, we go in and identify what we are going to model … and then 3D print them,” Ford said.

Nes-Hor and Nes-Min had been scanned previously, but this new scan allowed them to spot details that had never been identified before in the two mummies, such as potentially one of the earliest indications of spine surgery.

Inside Nes-Min’s spine, the researchers noticed several holes, which Decker said could indicate that some sort of pain-relieving procedure was performed.

“It was really exciting to have the tools and scanning equipment now that we didn’t have 15 years ago,” Decker said.

Nes-Hor was also revealed to have several missing teeth as well as a severely broken hip. This meant that in his daily life, he wasn’t able to walk without assistance from others or some sort of cane, Ford said. A 3D-printed reproduction of his hip is on display in the exhibit.

Ford said the scans also show that of the two, Nes-Hor was older in age at the time of his death.

The CT results showed that the other mummy, Nes-Min, was draped in a beaded necklace and garment and buried with several pieces of jewelry representing scarab beetles and a fish.

“At some point when [Nes-Min] was younger, he broke eight of his ribs on the right side of his body — and they healed slightly off,” Ford said.

He also had a collapsed lower back vertebra due to age-related deterioration. According to Decker, this indicates that, similar to humans today, Nes-Min likely experienced lower back pain.

The scans also helped show what both the mummies’ facial features looked like, such as their eyelids and lower lips.

Other scientists found that a different set of mummies in this exhibit from Europe contain Tuberculosis bacteria from about two hundred years ago. The analysis of these old samples could be extremely valuable in understanding how the disease changes over time, said Diane Perlov, senior vice president for special projects at the California Science Center.

Lynn Dodd, curator of the Archeology Research Center and Laboratory at USC, said there is nuance in an exhibition of this type, and respect must be shown to the mummies displayed.

“For some people, going to this exhibit is really problematic. They don’t want to be in the company of death or dead people,” Dodd said. “The California Science Center opens the exhibit with a statement of ethics, right? They don’t tell us what to think, but they say we recognize this is an issue. And so that’s a reflection of the dignity of persons … who are no longer living biologically.” Dodd said.

Perlov said what makes this exhibit so revolutionary is how it helps us interpret and learn from history.

“When you see the pain that some of these people went through … you see them as individual people,” said Perlov. “And, once you see their individuality, they no longer become objects. They become real people.”