Researchers in Berlin claim to have succeeded in re-creating the sound of the voice of an Egyptian person who died 3,000 years ago, and was entombed as a mummy.
The scientists say they managed to mimic the mummy’s voice (well, the voice of the living person the mummy used to be) by recreating portions of the vocal tract using medical scanners, 3D printing and an electronic larynx.
In a paper published Thursday by the journal Scientific Reports, the authors say the technique allowed them to produce a single sound – somewhere between the vowels in ‘bed’ and ‘bad.’
The eerie tone is unlikely to be a precise reflection of the speech of Egyptian priest Nesyamun, whose mummified body the researchers worked with, because the tongue has lost much of its bulk over three millennia.
“We have made a faithful sound for his tract in its current position, but we would not expect an exact speech match given his tongue state,” said co-author David M. Howard of London’s Royal Holloway college.
READ MORE at the Associated Press:
Ancient voice: Scientists recreate sound of Egyptian mummy
IMAGE: Crop from the original movie poster for ‘The Mummy’, 1932 (public domain)