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Experts recreated the voice of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy — it sounds nothing like we expected

Humans can now hear the voice of an Egyptian mummy as researchers devise a brilliant way to reconstruct their organs using 3D printer.

BY TIYASA BISWAS

PUBLISHED MAR 3, 2025

Two individuals checking out an egyptian mummy inside a museum. (Representative Cover Image Source: Pexels | Shvets Anna)

Scientists determined to know what a mummy sounds like have made significant progress in their endeavor. Leveraging 3D-printing technology to recreate the vocal tract of an ancient Egyptian mummy has liberated humans to now hear its voice for the first time ever in three millennia. This historical feat was conducted by a team of researchers in England and recorded data and observations in a study published in the journal Scientific Reports. While we have heard mummies speak in movies only, think Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy series, researchers mark the development as a key milestone in archaeology.

Mummified Remains in Tomb of the Golden Mummies. (Representative Image Source: Getty Images | Ron Watts)

The vocal tract of an ancient Egyptian priest, Nesyamun, who lived during the Twentieth Dynasty c. 1100 BC, was reconstructed using a CT scanner to produce a 3D image of his throat anatomy. The archaeologists chose to rebuild the mummy’s throat out of all other organs because the mummification process had only kept his throat and mouth intact all these years, per the New York Times. How so? Well, Nesyamun sang at the Karnak Temple in Thebes and was revered for his melodious voice in ancient times. Therefore, his demise prompted his mummification, reserved only for people of high nobility like pharaohs and officials, to immortalize his gift, per the Smithsonian Institution, with an inscription about his voice, that read, “Nesyamun, true of voice.”

Technician checking 3D printer. (Representative Image Source: Getty Images | Westend61)

“The actual mummification process was key here. The superb quality of preservation achieved by the ancient embalmers meant that Nesyamun’s vocal tract is still in excellent shape,” said co-author of the study, Joann Fletcher, an Egyptologist at England’s University of York. The small but essential information about Nesyamun’s voice encouraged the researchers to rediscover his voice. After printing out 3D images of his vocal tract, the structure was connected to an electronic larynx to actually produce the sounds and resurrect Nesyamun’s voice in the coffin.

The British Museum, the Egyptian exhibit. Representative Image Source: Getty Images |Alison Wright)

David Howard, speech scientist at Royal Holloway in London, who was part of the research, noted, “the sound that would come out of his vocal tract if he was in his coffin and his larynx came to life again.” However, the development is in its early stages with only as little as an “ah” or “eh” produced yet, as shared on YouTube by The Guardian. The expert shared that while the resurrected voice cannot speak complete words or sentences at the moment, it is a matter of time before they know how Nesyamun’s voice sounded exactly. Additional information relating to the Egyptian mummy’s tongue size, jaw position, and other aspects will allow the team to configure the replica of his speech.

Besides the technicalities, there also lies the question of ethics and morals. “When you’re taking a human being and using so much inference about what they looked or sounded like, it can be done with an agenda that you might not even be aware of,” insinuated Kara Cooney, an Egyptologist at the University of California. An integral part of recreating his voice is finding out how he died 3,000 years ago. Remarkably embalmed and mummified, Nesyamun’s tongue stuck out with no damage to his neck in the coffin, per the source. Hence, there is speculation about strangulation being a possible cause of death, if not, an insect sting on his tongue may have led to the priest’s death around his 50s.