Documentary that unwraps the mystery of mummification, a practice that has permeated almost every age and culture. Using computer graphics and animation, archival images and reconstruction, the program takes viewers back 5000 years into the embalming tents of the ancient Egyptians, where royal brains were removed, liquefied and then poured out in order to achieve successful mummification. The program also travels back to the Iron Age peat bogs of England, where acidic, super-saturated conditions left a preserved man. Finally, viewers are transported into the future of digital immortality; through a complex system of photographing and scanning each slice of the body of an executed death-row inmate, scientists are able to produce the most complete, detailed set of information that has ever existed of the insides of the human body-- the first virtual mummy.
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