US scientists open Egyptian mummy coffin
Once the lid was off the wood coffin holding the 2,500-year-old mummified remains of a 14-year-old Egyptian boy, scientist J.P. Brown could relax.
The conservator at Chicago's Field Museum and three other scientists had just used clamps and pieces of metal to create a cradle to lift the fragile lid. Wearing blue surgical gloves, they slowly lifted the contraption containing the coffin lid and carefully walked it to a table in a humidity-controlled lab at the museum.
"The fascinating thing about any mummy is that it's survived as long as it has," Brown said. "They're actually amazingly fragile."
The Field Museum has had the mummy since the 1920s, when the institution received it from the Chicago Historical Society. It's part of the museum's collection of 30 complete human mummies from Egypt.
