By:  Jim Cline

PITTSFIELD, Mass (WGGB) --  When the Berkshire Museum opened in the early 20th century, an Egyptian mummy was one of it's first acquisitions.  That mummy is showing experts how Egyptians took care of their dead. 

On Wednesday, the mummy, named Pahat, was taken to the Berkshire Medical Center to undergo his second CT scan.  The first one took place in 2007.  It was a low res scan with a 16 slice scanner.  But the hospital now has a 64 slice scanner.  

"We can get it acquired in thinner sections," said John Gable, the Cat scan supervisor, "which allows us to do the 3D reconstructions. 

Dr. Jonathan Elias, the director of the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium, was on hand to oversee the project once again.  He's studied about 20 mummies from this time period and he says Pahat's age, relative to that period, is something that stands out. 

"Pahat was an old man," said Elias. "He might have been say between 55 and 62.  That is old.  He's a survivor if he made it to that age in ancient Egypt in his day which was around 200 BC." 

Elias says these new scans will show us how Egyptians took care of their dead. 

"Pahat gives us a kind of roadmap to the magical approach used at that time," he said. "The better image data we get showing us what the pattern was employed in mummifying his body, the more we know about how the Egyptians themselves took care of their dead, what magical systems might have been employed in order to institute resurrection and eternal life."