Behind the Images - Ancient Egyptian Crocodile Mummies

Ancient Egyptian crocodile mummy from UC Berkeley's Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology
undergoing CT scan

Rare artifacts from the vast Egyptian collection of UC Berkeley’s Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology are on display in a new campus exhibit. The exhibition provides a unique perspective on how museums blend technology and the humanities to conserve and understand ancient objects. The highlights of the exhibit include two crocodile mummies that recently underwent CT scans at Stanford Medical School as well as statuary, mummy portraits, amulets, and one of only 30 known "reserve heads" used in Egyptian burial practices. The Egyptian artifacts represent some of the most important holdings in the Hearst's collection that totals 3.8 million objects.

Conservators at the Museum share their knowledge by working on smaller objects in the gallery at various times during the exhibition run. Learn more about their conservation efforts, including details about the CT scans of the two crocodile mummies on their blog “Inside the Conservator’s Art.”