Nesyamun, an Egyptian priest of 3000 years ago, speaks thanks to the reconstruction of his voice made by a research group of the University of London
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himNesyamun, an Egyptian priest from 3000 years ago, speaks. And he didn't just speak at the time (let's imagine so), he also speaks now, thanks to the reconstruction of his own voice made by a research group at the University of London.
The researchers used a computed tomography (CT) scanner to make a 3D printed version of Nesyamun's mouth and throat. The system was combined with an electronic larynx to reconstruct the sound that would come out of his vocal tract if it were in his coffin and his larynx came back to life.
The search began several years ago: in September 2016, staff from Leeds City Museum, England, where Nesyamun has resided for the past 200 years, took the mummy to a nearby hospital for a CT scan, from which it was it emerged that most of the gorge had remained intact. From this the possibility of carrying out the exceptional reconstruction.
"The mummification process was fundamental here - Joann Fletcher explains, co-author of the work. There superb preservation quality reached by the ancient embalmers meant that Nesyamun's vocal tract was still in excellent shape ”.
So the team 3D printed a copy of Nesyamun's vocal tract between the larynx and lips and inserted it into a speaker similar to the one used by ice cream trucks. At this point the sound existed, but it had to be electronically transformed: for this, through a computer, an electronic wave similar to that used in common speech synthesizers was built, a system that acted as an artificial larynx.
We currently have a single sound, similar to an exclamation, but the experiment, perfectly successful, could lay the foundations for the reconstruction of the real voice of an ancient person, perhaps who lived thousands of years ago.
"He certainly cannot speak at the moment - specifies David Howard, another co-author in this regard - But I think it is absolutely plausible to imagine that one day it will be possible produce real words".
To make this possible, the computer software will have to be modified to reconstruct elements such as the size and movement of the tongue, as well as the position of the jaw.
But whether this will be a reality, and how it will be used above all, has yet to be proven.
The study was published in Scientific Reports.
Read also:
- Turin: the mummy of Queen Nefertari was discovered at the Egyptian Museum
- Hidden secrets of an Egyptian tomb from 3 thousand years ago revealed: archaeologists open it live (VIDEO)
