Shaken by the earlier images, Robinson was now arched forward like a tightly strung bow, alert for the next surprise. The first slices of the thorax appeared, the cavity black and vacant.

“It appears that the lungs were removed,” the radiologist said.

“All I see is a shriveled bit of mediastinum in the chest.”

“That’s the heart,” said Pulcillo, her voice steadier now. This, at least, was what she’d expected to see. “They always tried to leave it in situ.”

“Just the heart?”

She nodded. “It was considered the seat of intelligence, so you never separated it from the body. There are three separate spells contained in the Book of the Dead to ensure that the heart remains in place.”

“And the other organs?” asked the CT tech. “I heard those were put in special jars.”

“That was before the Twenty-first Dynasty. After around a thousandBC, the organs were wrapped into four bundles and stuffed back into the body.”

“So we should be able to see that?”

“In a mummy from the Ptolemaic era, yes.”

“I think I can make an educated guess about her age when she died,” said the radiologist. “The wisdom teeth were fully erupted, and the cranial sutures are closed. But I don’t see any degenerative changes in the spine.”

“A young adult,” said Maura.

“Probably under thirty-five.”

“In the era she lived in, thirty-five was well into middle age,” said Robinson.

The scan had moved below the thorax, X-rays slicing through layers of wrappings, through the shell of dried skin and bones, to reveal the abdominal cavity. What Maura saw within was eerily unfamiliar, as strange to her as an alien autopsy. Where she expected to see liver and spleen, stomach and pancreas, instead she saw snake-like coils of linen, an interior landscape that was missing all that should have been recognizable. Only the bright knobs of vertebral bone told her this was indeed a human body, a body that had been hollowed out to a mere shell and stuffed like a rag doll.