With the push of a button, the CT scanner whirred and lurched forward.

A centuries-old mummy was about to undergo a 21st-century medical examination.

In the name of art and science, the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach and Mount Sinai Medical Center in Aventura came together this month to examine the remains of a mummy recently rediscovered in the museum's collection.

Using the latest medical technology, the team hopes to unwrap secrets about the mummy's life and death.

``Specifically, personally -- what was his story?'' asked Silvia Karman Cubiñá, executive director and chief curator of the Bass. ``We're going to try to determine that.''

The secrets of the Egyptian mummy, believed to be thousands of years old, will be revealed at a Bass Museum exhibit next year.

As the head of the mummy passed through the machine, images resembling a map of the night sky popped up on a computer screen in an adjacent room. Within minutes, the images joined to reveal an intact skull and an almost full set of teeth. A gaping black cavity showed no brain inside the skull -- Egyptians removed the organ through the nose during mummification, as it was considered unnecessary for the afterlife.

The scanner continued to creep forward, taking 2,500 images about one millimeter thick that were interpreted by Dr. Jeffrey Neitlich, chairman of the radiology department.

``You get to be part of history,'' Neitlich said.

This isn't the first time the doctor has examined an ancient patient: Neitlich helped out with a mummy scan while at Yale University in the early 1990s.

To prepare for last week's scan, he read up on ancient Egypt and other mummy CT scans -- such as the one King Tut underwent -- with the help of his wife, Dr. Tyler Neitlich, who is also a radiologist at Mount Sinai.

``Huh, interesting,'' said Neitlich, as the scanner moved from the mummy's chest to its pelvis. ``A lot of the bones are not in the proper place.''

Indeed, the CT images showed a mess of bones packed inside the body cavity, as well as a curved spine and crippled hands and knees. The mummy probably had scoliosis and arthritis, which may have been due to old age or occupation. The size of the mummy's pelvic bones indicate it probably was a male and the size of the leg bones suggest he was in his 30s when he died. Another puzzling point: The mummy had no heart. Egyptians usually left the heart in place because it was considered the center of life and intelligence.

Last week's scan was actually the mummy's second: An examination in the 1980s revealed the gender and spinal problems.

The ancient Egyptian artifact has only recently been brought back to light, though it has been in the museum's collection since it was donated in 1979 by John Bass, who purchased it from a Swiss gallery. Bass and his wife, Johanna, began donating items in their collection to the city of Miami Beach in the 1960s in order for them to be publicly displayed.

Museum staff aren't sure why the mummy has never been displayed at the Bass. But it captured the attention of Cubiñá, the museum's relatively new leader, when she received a list of all the items in the museum's collection when applying for the position last year.

``I really fell in love with it when I saw it,'' she said. ``You really can't believe the weight of history that this object has.''

Dull red, blue, yellow and green hieroglyphic images of the gods Osiris and Horuss are painted onto the mummy's inner sarcophagus, which measures about 69 inches long and 17 inches across. A carved face with wide eyes is painted a deep orange. The nose is cracked and a hole remains where a goatee would have been.

Made of sycamore fig wood, scholars say the encasing dates back to 760-656 B.C., though the type of wrapping used on the mummy indicate the body probably is from a later period. The difference in the age of the encasing and the body is probably due to recycling of sarcophagi, which was normal, scholars say. Museum staff have collected bone fragments and snippets of cloth from the mummy to be carbon dated and determine a more precise age. Scholars are also working on deciphering some of the markings on the sarcophagus to glean more clues about who this mummified man may have been.

``We're studying it,'' Cubiñá said. ``The responsible thing to do is to learn as much as we can about it.''

The museum plans to dedicate a permanent space to the mummy and other Egyptian artifacts in spring 2010, when all findings about the mummy will be revealed.

``If there's anything to find out, we're on our way,'' Cubiñá said.

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