A DELICATE operation to prepare a one-armed mummy for a 12-month journey to the other side of the world was yesterday in its final stages.

Museum staff are packing up a 2,300-year-old Egyptian mummy, which has been one of the star exhibits at the Oriental Museum, in Durham City, for the past 40 years, before it heads off on a tour of Japan.

The mummified priest may not have been very well preserved in life - experts have revealed he suffered a slipped disc, kidney stone, dental abcesses, a broken toe, malnutrition and had a false arm - but he is getting the very best of care in death.

A team of experts from Cambridge were in the North-East yesterday, preparing the delicate bandages with the chemicals which will, hopefully, keep him in one piece during his trip.

Little is known about the life of the man who was mummified. The mummy is usually displayed behind his gilded linen mask and protective glass case.

The nameless priest, in his 50s, is thought to have died in 250BC and was discovered by 19th Century archaeologists at Akhmim, protected by a winged scarab and sun disk.

He is also fitted with one of the first prostheses known to man, with a fake hand modelled in linen bandages, carefully shaped to fit over the stump and equipped with finger and thumb. X-rays revealed that the bones in his arm were misshapen, perhaps as a result of a congenital problem.

Oriental Museum curator Craig Barclay said: "The mummy with the fake arm is very popular with our visitors and we wanted to make sure that he looks his best for the long journey to Japan.

"He is one of the best-known characters at the Oriental Museum, in Durham. We will be very sad to be without our mummy for a while, but I think there is great potential for this exhibition to raise the profile of Durham, the university and the collection.

"It's a wonderful opportunity for us to show the exhibits we have here to a new audience."

In all, 150 artefacts from Durham's collection of 6,000 pieces are being sent to Japan, ranging from gold jewellery to a huge granite obelisk, which once graced Alwnick Castle, having been brought back from Egypt by the 4th Duke of Northumberland