Mummy myths and modern science battle it out in today's studies of the ancient dead of the Kingdom on the Nile.

Mummies and myths go together, with a touch of ghoulish fascination with ancient tombs for added interest, but modern science is shedding a little light on some of our more musty ideas about ancient Egypt's dead.
Even as modern-day Egypt seethes with political turmoil, scholarship into the mortuary practices of that ancient land is enjoying a renaissance.
"Mummification went on in Egypt for more than 3,000 years, and the practice changed at different times and places," says anthropologist Andrew Wade of Canada's University of Western Ontario. "In the past, we would look at one or two mummies and make conclusions, but now we have a lot more non-destructive technology and medical information we can bring to bear on them."
In an upcoming Journal of Archaeological Science analysis, Wade and his colleague Andrew Nelson look at radiological scans of 84 ancient mummies from museums worldwide. Their goal: seeking to prove or disprove some of the hoariest (and creepiest), accounts of ancient mummification. Among those ideas was the notion that embalmers removed the brains of dead rulers through the nose and that the practice was limited to royalty and their loyal followers. Another is that the internal organs of the wealthy were removed from mummies. The study and a series of related reports show all of those ideas, long staples of scary mummy stories good for grossing out schoolkids and adults, look a little more complicated when viewed under the X-ray.
Blame some of the confusion on the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who first filed his accounts of how embalmers preserved the dead along the Nile around 440 B.C. He recounted a description of mummification practices in his historical accounts of a visit to Thebes in Egypt, of which he wrote, "There is no country that possesses so many wonders, nor any that has such a number of works which defy description." Still, he tried, describing brain and abdominal surgeries to remove organs as part of mummification for the wealthy. A cheap chemical dissolution of the innards was reserved for the poor, who were buried without being wrapped in the linen used to make a classic mummy.