The ancient Egyptians used to worship cats as sacred, which might explain why Egypt is no longer a world power. In the past, archaeologists could only examine a cat mummy from the outside. However with today’s technology, they may be able to scan the inside of a cat mummy without opening it up. The South Australian Museum is now using CT scans on cat mummies from their collections.

“It’s a technique that can be done on any CT scanner,” says lead author James Bewes, a radiology resident at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia, who describes the work in the August issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

To read more about scanning the inside of cat mummies, click here.