MONTREAL - Montreal's Redpath Museum is the afterlife physical home of a trio of ancient Egyptians.

The two women and one man have been swathed in linen for many centuries and have been around this island for 150 years.

The mummies are to science what a gift that-must-never-be-unwrapped would be a child. Unwrapping the mummies would be out of the question.

So researchers have sent the trio to the Montreal Neurological Institute for a high-tech scan for a project run by the University of Western Ontario.

"This individual had quite poor dentition even though he was fairly young and it looks like they did some - a little dental work on him which is quite rare in ancient Egypt," says Andrew Nelson of Western about one of the bodies.

They hope to score such insights into mummies around the world to learn more about the customs of antiquity.