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Discover more 40 mummies in Egypt (February 2019) 1:03
(CNN) - Scientists have revealed how the voice of a mummified Egyptian priest who lived 3,000 years ago when 3D printing his vocal tract would have sounded.
The team was able to accurately reproduce a single sound, which sounds a bit like a long and exasperated "meh" without the "m".
David Howard, one of the academics behind the project, describes it as a mixture between the vowels of the English words "bed" and "bad" ("bed" and "bad").
https://cnnespanol2.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/mummy.voice_.mp3"The sound you hear is the sound of your vocal tract in the position it is lying in the sarcophagus," said Howard, a professor of electrical engineering at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Howard has already reproduced the vocal tracts of living people, including his own, using this same method and discovered that the sounds produced were very realistic. However, this is the first time that the technique is applied to human remains. The results were published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
Nesyamyn vocal tract in 3D printing.
Sound does not speak
The team chose the mummy of the Egyptian priest Nesyamun from the City of Leeds Museum in the United Kingdom because the soft tissue in the throat and vocal tract was reasonably intact. His technique does not work on skeletal remains.
The team took the mummy to the general infirmary of Leeds, where she underwent a CT scan in 2016 to obtain all the necessary measures to reproduce the vocal tract, which curves from the larynx to the lips.
A computer software was then used to identify the airway, which was printed in 3D using plastic similar to that used to make Lego bricks. The printed airway was then connected to a specialized speaker, as well as to an artificial larynx commonly used to make an electronic speech, through which the sound is reproduced. What came out was the sound of the vowel.
Howard warns that the sound they played is just the sound of his voice and is not really the Egyptian priest speaking, although this is something that could be possible in the future to revolutionize the way we connect with the past.
"In fact, it is not a sound you probably would have made in practice because most of your language is not there," he told CNN.
Nesyamun's tongue muscles had worn out and the tongue plays a key role in speech, changing the sounds we can make, Howard said. It is believed that he died in the mid-50s and had very worn teeth and gum disease.
The project came about by chance when Howard discussed his work by reproducing the vocal tracts of living humans with a former co-worker and co-author of this article, John Schofield of the University of York.
“He looked at me and said: 'I am an archaeologist. Could it be used for human remains? '
Mummy singer?
Howard said he would also like to try to reproduce the vocal tract of the Lindow Man, whose 2,000-year-old remains were found in 1984 preserved in a peat bog in Cheshire in northern England.
"We could go to any other mummy that is in the right state of preservation and if we had permission we could do exactly the same."
Mummy of Nesyamun in the Museum of the City of Leeds.
Howard also hopes to carry out a second stage of investigation in the vocal tract of Nesyamun that could result in reproducing the sound of him singing as he would have done in his scribe and priest role during the reign of Pharaoh Ramses XI. His voice was an essential part of his ritual duties, which included speaking and singing.
According to Howard, the Egyptian scholars of the team said that the phonetics and music of the songs were known, so "in principle we could make it emit different sounds and we could begin to reproduce fragments of what it really sang." To do that, Howard said he would use computer software to build the language based on the average of a vocal tract of that size.
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“Give him a language that is reasonable, so we could move the entire vocal tract using knowledge of speech production. It is feasible, although we cannot do it easily at this time. ”
Meanwhile, the fall intonation done with the vocal tract of Nesyamun will probably be part of the Nesyamun exhibit at the Leeds City Museum. His body and coffin are the star artifacts of the museum and have been on permanent display there for almost 200 years.
The study authors also suggested that it could be used to inspire and excite some of the million annual visitors to the well-preserved Karnak temple in Egypt, where Nesyamun would have done his homework.
"The synthesis of its vocal function allows us to make direct contact with ancient Egypt by hearing a sound from a vocal tract that has not been heard in more than 3,000 years," they said in the newspaper.