CT scans and 3D printing give voice to mummified priest

The sound of Nesyamun has been reproduced as a vowel-like sound based on measurements of his remaining vocal tract following CT scanning, which led to the build of a 3D printed vocal tract.

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The Vocal Tract Organ provides a user-controllable artificial larynx and the team used it to synthesise a vowel sound that is said to compare favourably with vowels of modern humans. The study is published in Scientific Reports.

Prof David Howard, from the Department of Engineering at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Prof John Schofield, Prof Joann Fletcher and Dr Stephen Buckley all from the Department of Archaeology at York University, started the project in 2013.

The team used a CT scanner at Leeds General Infirmary to see if the significant part of the structure of Nesyamun’s larynx and throat remained intact.

The scan allowed the academics to measure the vocal tract shape from CT images and based on these measurements, they created a 3D-printed vocal tract for Nesyamun and used it with an artificial larynx sound that is commonly used in speech synthesis systems.