What is "meresamun"

Meresamun ("Amun Loves Her") was an ancient Egyptian singer-priestess in the inner sanctum at the temple in Karnak. Her mummy, ca. 800 BC, was on exhibit at the Oriental Institute of Chicago Museum of the University of Chicago from February 10 to December 6, 2009. A special exhibition, “The Life of Meresamun: A Temple Singer in Ancient Egypt,” opened in February 2009 and provides a personal look into Meresamun’s life.

The mummy was purchased in 1920 by James Henry Breasted during a visit to Egypt and has remained unopened. This mummy is unusual in that it has been CT scanned 3 times with different generations of imaging technology: first in 1991 using a GE single-slice helical scanner, next in July 2008 with a 64-slice Philips Brilliance 64 scanner, and most recently in late September 2008 using a Philips iCT 256-slice CT scanner. All of the examinations were performed at the University of Chicago Medical Center in the Department of Radiology.