Posted on 09/05/2021 1:31:33 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
In the nearly 200 years since his mummy’s arrival at the Leeds City Museum in northern England, an ancient Egyptian priest named Nesyamun has slowly but surely revealed his secrets.
Employed as a high-ranking priest and scribe at the Karnak state temple in Thebes, Nesyamun performed rituals filled with both song and speech. Active during the turbulent reign of Ramses XI, who served as Egypt’s pharaoh between 1099 and 1069 B.C., he died in his mid-50s, likely due to a severe allergic reaction, and suffered from ailments including gum disease and heavily worn teeth. And, as evidenced by inscriptions on his coffin, Nesyamun hoped his soul would one day speak to the gods much as he had in life.
A new study published in the journal Scientific Reports fulfills the 3,000-year-old priest’s vision of the afterlife, drawing on CT scans of his surprisingly intact vocal tract to engineer an approximation of his voice. The sound bite, created with a speech synthesizing tool called the Vocal Tract Organ, reconstructs “the sound that would come out of his vocal tract if he was in his coffin and his larynx came to life again,” says study co-author David Howard, a speech scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London, to the New York Times’ Nicholas St. Fleur.
The clip itself is brief and vaguely underwhelming, capturing a single vowel sound media outlets have described as “resembl[ing] a brief groan,” “a bit like a long, exasperated ‘meh’ without the ‘m,’” “a sound caught between the words ‘bed’ and ‘bad,’” and “rather like ‘eeuuughhh.’”
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
Ancient spirits of evil,
transform this decayed form to
Mum-ra the ever living.😋
Or any Democrat you could name.🤔
it’s actually surprising to me. I’d expect a 50yo to have a deeper eeehhhhh but it sounds more like a juvenile eeehhhhh after being asked to mow the lawn
remarkable, but I think the scientists had to have been pretty stoned to think this experiment up. :-p
I broke out in laughter as well. All that build up and it’s “meh”.
Why that’s AMAZING!
I can’t believe they can reconstruct that from 3,000 years ago.
I think the technology has a way to go. One way in IMHO would be to build a replica of a living person (such as the researcher) and work out the mechanics.
“Luke, I’m am your father”
Reminds me of something my grandfather said just before he died...
heaaaa!
When I go, I want to go quietly in my sleep, like my grandfather did -- not screaming, like the other people in his chariot.
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