[00:01.040]--- Lesson 77 A successful operation
[00:08.080]--- First listen and then answer the question.
[00:14.480]--- Did the doctors find out how the woman died?
[00:20.880]The mummy of an Egyptian woman who died in 800 B.C. has just had an operation.
[00:29.760]The mummy is that of Shepenmut who was once a singer in the Temple of Thebes.
[00:38.880]As there were strange marks on the X-ray plates taken of the mummy,
[00:44.200]doctors have been trying to find out whether the woman died of a rare disease.
[00:50.200]The only way to do this was to operate.
[00:53.560]The operation, which lasted for over four hours, proved to be very difficult because of the hard resin which covered the skin.
[01:03.800]The doctors removed a section of the mummy and sent it to a laboratory.
[01:09.480]They also found something which the X-ray plates did not show: a small wax figure of the god Duamutef.
[01:20.360]This god which has the head of a cow was normally placed inside a mummy.
[01:27.160]The doctors have not yet decided how the woman died.
[01:31.160]They feared that the mummy would fall to pieces when they cut it open, but fortunately this has not happened.
[01:39.240]The mummy successfully survived the operation.
[01:44.920]--- end