Mummy

Mimi Leveque, Peabody Essex Museum conservator; Becca Melius curator at Boston's Museum of Science; and Rebecca Barber, an intern, examined a mummy Tuesday in preparation for the Boston museum's ‘‘Lost Egypt: Ancient Secrets, Modern Science" exhibit, which opens Sunday. The exhibit will include amummy prototype in its ‘‘unwrapping" stage. View more photos here .

Mimi Leveque, Peabody Essex Museum conservator; Becca Melius curator at Boston's Museum of Science; and Rebecca Barber, an intern, examined a mummy Tuesday in preparation for the Boston museum's ‘‘Lost Egypt: Ancient Secrets, Modern Science" exhibit, which opens Sunday. The exhibit will include amummy prototype in its ‘‘unwrapping" stage. View more photos here .

An international team of researchers that includes two Quinnipiac University professors has received a financial boost to build an information database about mummies around the U.S. The inventory will include medical imaging of mummified human remains. It's expected to help scholars worldwide as they collaborate on research about particular medical conditions those mummified people might have experienced. The team building the database is led by a researcher at the University of Western Ontario, and Quinnipiac professors Ronald Beckett and Jerry Conlogue are among those working...

ST. LOUIS - A St. Louis museum can keep hold of a 3,200-year-old mummy's mask, a federal judge has ruled, saying the US government failed to prove that the Egyptian relic was ever stolen. Prosecutors said the funeral mask of Lady Ka-Nefer-Nefer went missing from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo about 40 years ago and that it should be returned to its country of origin. The St. Louis Art Museum said it researched the provenance of the mask and legitimately purchased it in 1998 from a New York art dealer.

"Do the words 'Rest in Peace' mean anything to you people?" asks someone during the course of "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. " Apparently not. Nine years after the first big-budget action "Mummy" and seven years after its follow-up comes this jokey, frenetic, overproduced three-quel. Despite plenty of post-"Pirates of the Caribbean" zombie mayhem, it's strictly for kids. And for Brendan Fraser's bank account. The star is just about the only person left from the 1999 original, but his dudacious charm is wearing thin as adventurer Rick O'Connell once more steps into the breach of the undead.

A professor from American University in Cairo says discovery of prostate cancer in a 2,200-year-old mummy indicates the disease was caused by genetics, not environment. The genetics-environment question is key to understanding cancer. AUC professor Salima Ikram, a member of the team that studied the mummy in Portugal for two years, said Sunday the mummy was of a man who died in his forties. She said this was the second oldest known case of prostate cancer. "Living conditions in ancient times were very different; there were no pollutants or modified...

The shipping label said the mailed package contained replicas of Peruvian ceramics. An X-ray machine used by customs agents discovered it really held three skulls and a mummy more than 2,000 years old. Authorities said Friday that the package was intercepted at Argentina’s central post office, and an Argentine citizen who was waiting for the shipment has been detained as part of an investigation into illegal trading in ancient cultural artifacts....

LUXOR, Egypt -- A team of researchers briefly removed King Tut's mummy from its tomb yesterday and laid bare his bones for a CT scan that could solve an enduring mystery: Was it murder or natural causes that killed Egypt's boy pharaoh 3,000 years ago? Tut's toes and fingers and an eerie outline of his face could be seen as the mummy, resting in a box to protect it, was placed inside the machine in a specially equipped van parked near his underground tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

Jessica Simpson has confirmed what photos have indicated — she's having a baby. The 31-year-old entertainer Tweeted a photo of herself Monday dressed as a mummy for Halloween, holding her baby bump with the words, "It's true. I am going to be a mummy. " It will be the first child for Simpson and her fiance Eric Johnson. The two announced their engagement last year. Her pregnancy has been rumored for weeks, and recently, photos of Simpson — with a bulging bump — have appeared.

'People, Mr. Daly, want the next thing," says a character to ex-museum guard Larry Daly (Ben Stiller) in "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian," and there's Hollywood's rationale for sequelitis in an over-budgeted, computer-generated nutshell. The follow-up to the surprise 2006 hit movie reeks of No. 2: It's bigger, noisier, shinier, and dumber, and it has no earthly reason to exist. The kids will scarf it down like junk food and move on. Still, let's savor the few pieces of wit that have made it through the sausage factory intact.

An international team of researchers that includes two Quinnipiac University professors has received a financial boost to build an information database about mummies around the U.S. The inventory will include medical imaging of mummified human remains. It's expected to help scholars worldwide as they collaborate on research about particular medical conditions those mummified people might have experienced. The team building the database is led by a researcher at the University of Western Ontario, and Quinnipiac professors Ronald Beckett and Jerry Conlogue are among those working...

BURLINGTON - On an August day in 1849, a crew of Irish laborers, digging a railroad bed in Charlotte, Vt., just south of Burlington, unearthed a skull and a batch of bones that they no doubt first thought were remains of a horse or ox or some other large familiar creature. It was, indeed, a large creature, but, of all things, it was a whale, and it was found, incongruously, in 8 feet of clay a mile from the shore of freshwater Lake Champlain. Someone wisely had the sense to turn the bones over to Zadock Thompson, the preeminent Vermont natural scientist,...

A professor from American University in Cairo says discovery of prostate cancer in a 2,200-year-old mummy indicates the disease was caused by genetics, not environment. The genetics-environment question is key to understanding cancer. AUC professor Salima Ikram, a member of the team that studied the mummy in Portugal for two years, said Sunday the mummy was of a man who died in his forties. She said this was the second oldest known case of prostate cancer. "Living conditions in ancient times were very different; there were no pollutants or modified...

Jessica Simpson has confirmed what photos have indicated — she's having a baby. The 31-year-old entertainer Tweeted a photo of herself Monday dressed as a mummy for Halloween, holding her baby bump with the words, "It's true. I am going to be a mummy. " It will be the first child for Simpson and her fiance Eric Johnson. The two announced their engagement last year. Her pregnancy has been rumored for weeks, and recently, photos of Simpson — with a bulging bump — have appeared.

The shipping label said the mailed package contained replicas of Peruvian ceramics. An X-ray machine used by customs agents discovered it really held three skulls and a mummy more than 2,000 years old. Authorities said Friday that the package was intercepted at Argentina’s central post office, and an Argentine citizen who was waiting for the shipment has been detained as part of an investigation into illegal trading in ancient cultural artifacts....

CAIRO — Archeologists have unearthed 57 ancient Egyptian tombs, most of which hold an ornately painted wooden sarcophagus with a mummy inside, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said. The oldest tombs date back to around 2750 BC during the period of Egypt’s first and second dynasties, the council said in a statement. Twelve of the tombs belong the 18th dynasty which ruled Egypt during the second millennium BC. The discovery throws new light on Egypt’s ancient religions, the council said.

BURLINGTON - On an August day in 1849, a crew of Irish laborers, digging a railroad bed in Charlotte, Vt., just south of Burlington, unearthed a skull and a batch of bones that they no doubt first thought were remains of a horse or ox or some other large familiar creature. It was, indeed, a large creature, but, of all things, it was a whale, and it was found, incongruously, in 8 feet of clay a mile from the shore of freshwater Lake Champlain. Someone wisely had the sense to turn the bones over to Zadock Thompson, the preeminent Vermont natural scientist, who with help from...

Don't sweat your family vacations, cherish them. Put those little irritations -- backseat squabbles, cries of favoritism, never-ending pleas to buy things -- in perspective. You and your children will be carving out memories of special times together, and after the youngsters have taken a journey of their own to adulthood, you will find yourself wishing you could travel back in time for just one more family trip. Take it from one who has seen those family-vacation years fly by faster than a supersonic jet. Here are some family-friendly ideas: Deadly curses,...

'People, Mr. Daly, want the next thing," says a character to ex-museum guard Larry Daly (Ben Stiller) in "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian," and there's Hollywood's rationale for sequelitis in an over-budgeted, computer-generated nutshell. The follow-up to the surprise 2006 hit movie reeks of No. 2: It's bigger, noisier, shinier, and dumber, and it has no earthly reason to exist. The kids will scarf it down like junk food and move on. Still, let's savor the few pieces of wit that have made it through the sausage factory intact.

"Do the words 'Rest in Peace' mean anything to you people?" asks someone during the course of "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. " Apparently not. Nine years after the first big-budget action "Mummy" and seven years after its follow-up comes this jokey, frenetic, overproduced three-quel. Despite plenty of post-"Pirates of the Caribbean" zombie mayhem, it's strictly for kids. And for Brendan Fraser's bank account. The star is just about the only person left from the 1999 original, but his dudacious charm is wearing thin as adventurer Rick O'Connell once more steps into the...