FACT: Sand in their bread caused serious tooth problems for the ancient Egyptians, peasants and pharaohs alike.

FACT: Skull surgery was commonly performed by the Inca Indians of Peru.

FACT: A thick soup made of grain and seeds was a typical winter meal in Denmark during the Iron Age.

How can we be so sure of what ancient life was like? Largely because mummies have begun to "talk" to scientists. X-rays allow scientists to study mummies that have never been unwrapped! The shape of the face appears, and resemblances may establish family relationships. In the bones of a mummy, medical scientists can read age at death, signs of disease, fractures that healed. Teeth yield information about diet and health. Sometimes a mummy offers a surprise: an Egyptian mummy is found to have two skulls; another, long thought to be the child of a high priestess, turns out to be a baboon. Sometimes a mummy tells a moving story: examination of a girl's mummy shows she lived her short life in considerable pain; a man's mummy, with broken bones and slit throat, proves he met a violent death.

Generously illustrated with photographs ranging from the gruesome to the starkly beautiful, Tales Mummies Tell is a remarkable account of mummies--intriguing talebearers from the past and of the ways scientists unlock their secrets.