3
Henut was so excited. Today was school day, and several boys from their neighborhood would join her brother for lessons with their father, and so would she! Her father was a “Scribe of the Granary” and had been away lately, but now that he was back, lessons would start again. She had practiced and practiced writing letters to officials just like their father had taught them. Over and over again, wetting her rush pen and scrapping on her black-powdered disk to get ink, she carefully wrote on her whitewashed wooden board: “This is a communication to the lord, life, prosperity and health, that all the affairs of the lord, life, prosperity and health, are safe and sound in their places …” Her mother said she was getting too much black ink on her linen tunics and the washerman was complaining, but she said it with a twinkle in her eye.
WHO WAS LITERATE IN ANCIENT EGYPT?
Ancient civilizations did not have high rates of literacy. A majority of people had to spend their time working, or their families would have nothing to eat. Learning to read and write took time that most people could not afford to give up, along with the fact that a person did not need to be literate to raise animals or grow plants, which is what most ancient Egyptian peasants did. It is a guess, but an educated one, that in the Old Kingdom (2686–2160 BCE), probably 1% of the population was literate, but by the later New Kingdom (1295–1069 BCE), there is clearly more literacy, and perhaps 5% of the population was literate. The majority of these literate people would have been male officials working in government administration. Literacy in ancient Egypt can be thought of as a very high-status skill as it was demanded of any man who wanted to work his way up through the administration of the government, the army, or the priesthood. For women, who did not have careers in any of these administrative branches, literacy was not necessary but undoubtedly was attained by a small number of women, particularly in elite and royal families where women would have been property owners and controlled a fair amount of wealth.
WHAT WAS EDUCATION LIKE IN ANCIENT EGYPT?
For the vast majority of ancient Egyptians, education consisted of what they learned from their fathers and mothers. Most boys would have learned how to farm from working with their fathers, and those who were sons of craftsmen learned those skills from their fathers. Mothers would have taught their daughters all they needed to know to run a household and cook, deal with common illnesses, as well as possibly weaving and sewing. What we would call “school” education was limited to elite and royal boys. Schools were located in the royal residence, sometimes in temples, as well as in the households of scribes who gave lessons. Our information about these schools comes from autobiographies and texts that school boys copied. Schooling seems to have started around the age of five or six and lasted four years. Then a boy would work as a trainee in either a branch of the government or the army or join the priesthood.
The material learned at school was writing and reading hieratic, which is cursive handwriting, along with arithmetic. Arithmetic consisted of working with fractions and working out basic geometry problems, such as finding the area of a triangle or the volume of a cylinder. Handwriting was done in ligatures, or small groups of signs connected together. Many of the hieratic texts given to the students to read and copy consisted of reasons why a young man would want to be a scribe and descriptions of how lucky one was to be a scribe. Papyrus Lansing, dating to the later New Kingdom (1186–1069 BCE), contains lines such as “Writing for him who knows it is better than all other professions”; “Be a scribe! Your body will be sleek; your hand will be soft”; and “You call for one, a thousand answer you; You stride freely on the road.” There are also texts that warn about not being a bad student. One part has the teacher telling a student that “[y]our heart is denser than a great obelisk.” The ancient Egyptians thought that what we know goes on in the brain went on in the heart, so this is equivalent to telling the student that he is a blockhead. The teacher goes on to say, “[T]hough I beat you with every type of stick, you do not listen” (Lichtheim 1976: 168–71).
At school, beginning scribes wrote on small wooden boards coated with whitewash; it could be easily cleaned off with something wet and reused. They wrote with a rush pen in black ink made from charcoal. The pen tip was dipped in water and then scrapped across a hard disk of powdered charcoal. The teacher corrected in red ink, which, of course, still happens today. Scribes carried a thin rectangular wooden palette with them, which had at the top two round inkwells for black- and red-powdered disks and a cavity the middle to keep pens. Scribes also had to carry with them a small jar or pot with water to wet the rush pens.
THE EVIDENCE FOR LITERATE WOMEN IN ANCIENT EGYPT
There is evidence that can be used to show that some women in ancient Egypt were able to read and write, but it is not definitive. The ancient Egyptian word for scribe is sesh, and the female equivalent is the word seshat. Seshat is found as a title in the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BCE), but in the context in which the word is found seems to mean a “cosmetician,” not a “scribe.” The first time the word seshat is unquestionably used as a title for a woman who is a scribe is the “Female Scribe of the Divine Adoratrice” Irtyru, of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty (664–610 BCE), a fact that might have no relevance at all in explaining the use of the title much earlier in ancient Egyptian history. What is interesting is that the ancient Egyptian word seshat was also the name of the goddess of writing. If the deity of writing was a female, and was depicted writing in religious scenes, it could hardly have been unusual to have had actual human females writing as well.
Arguments have been made that letters sent by women are evidence of their literacy, but it is really not evidence of anything other than access to someone who could have written the letter. Other evidence that is used to show that women may have been scribes in the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE) are Theban tombs that depict a woman sitting with her husband in an offering scene in their tomb. As objects that are placed under chairs are accepted as the property of the person sitting in the chair, the six tombs with scenes of women sitting with scribal equipment under their chairs are interpreted by some scholars as proof that women could be scribes. In one case, which is the most convincing, the wife of the tomb owner is shown four different times in the tomb chapel, and each time she has her scribe’s kit with her (Bryan 1985: 23). Unfortunately, the tomb is so damaged that names and titles cannot be seen. In any case, “even if we were to accept all the occurrences of seshat as signifying the female equivalent of a male scribe, the number would be pitifully small” (Robins 1993: 113). Women did not have jobs that meant that they had to be scribes, but in certain cases, they could have been taught to read and write at home and be able to make use of this skill without leaving evidence of their literacy behind.
The lady Naunakhte married a “Scribe of the Royal Tomb” named Qenherkhopshef at the village of Deir el-Medineh in the Twentieth Dynasty (1186–1069 BCE). She was apparently young, and her husband was an older man. Qenherkhopsef was the owner of a library of papyrus rolls, and he copied all kinds of documents. One papyrus sheet, for example, known as Papyrus Chester Beatty 3, now in the British Museum (ESA 10685), had a dream book, an interpretation of dreams, on one side, and a poem about Ramses II’s Battle of Kadesh, on the other side. These papyri were inherited by Naunakhte and were passed down to her second husband and her children by him, when she died. They were discovered in 1928 in the cemetery at Deir el-Medineh, not in a tomb, but were buried near one of the chapels. It would seem logical in Naunakhte’s situation that she might have been taught to read as a child and therefore made a good marital match for an important scribe or that he would have taught her to read once they were married. She clearly valued these papyri after the death of Qenherkhopsef.
Evidence for the education of royal females might be a little stronger. An ivory scribe’s palette with the name of the “King’s Daughter Meketaten,” the second daughter of Akhenaten (1352–1336 BCE), was discovered at the city of Amarna. It had four inkwells, and the colors black, blue, and possibly green or yellow were found in them. The palette itself is only slightly more than five inches long and may have belonged to Meketaten as a young girl. Another ivory palette, belonging to Meritaten, Meketaten’s older sister, was found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun (1336–1327 BCE), her brother-in-law. The palette was inscribed with the “King’s Daughter Meritaten born of the Great Royal Wife Nefertiti.” Meritaten’s palette was of normal size and had six inkwells, holding the colors yellow, white, green, black, and red. The argument has been made that because these palettes had colors other than just black and red, they were used for coloring and painting rather than writing. It has been brought up, however, that these two royal princesses may have been schooled in reading and writing but certainly not because they were being trained to be professional scribes. Because their palettes were not standard scribal ones with just black and red ink does not mean that they did not use them to write (Allon and Navratilova 2018: 70–73).
Male tutors, called mena nesut, were known for both royal princes and princesses in the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550–1295 BCE). The title for male tutor was the masculine form of the ancient Egyptian word for wet nurse, menat nesut. Scholars assume that while the wet nurse literally nursed the royal child, the male nurse functioned as a tutor, teaching reading and writing, among other skills. For example, the royal tutor of Amenhotep II, the son of Thutmose III, is depicted teaching him archery. Undoubtedly, the tutor was also training the child how to behave as royalty. In the beginning, important officials in various positions were given the job of tutor, but later in the Eighteenth Dynasty, tutoring became a career position, and the man holding that job only tutored and worked under an “overseer of tutors.”
Probably the best known of these tutors was Senenmut, who was the royal tutor for Neferure, the daughter and only known child of Queen Hatshepsut and her short-lived half-brother and husband, King Thutmose II (1492–1479 BCE). It was probably Thutmose II who appointed Senenmut as the princess’s tutor. As well, the king had appointed Senenmut the steward of both the estates of Neferure and that of her mother Queen Hatshepsut. Ten statues have been found that show Senenmut standing and holding a very young Neferure, or sitting with her on his lap. It is extremely unusual in ancient Egyptian art to have a nonroyal and a royal person shown together in statuary. Senenmut seems to have functioned in the capacity of royal tutor until Hatshepsut became king, herself, along with her stepson, Thutmose III (1479–1425 BCE). Then another official, Senimen, became the tutor of Neferure, and Senenmut was in the position of his supervisor (Cline and O’Connor 2006: 98).
HEALTH PROBLEMS IN ANCIENT EGYPT
The environment of the Nile valley created certain health problems for the ancient Egyptians. Everyone lived along a strip of very fertile land on each side of the river, and agriculture was the core of the Egyptian economy. The vast majority of the population were farmers growing emmer wheat and barley. Irrigated land with standing water and wide swaths of grain fields made a perfect environment in which mosquitos could flourish. Nile mud along the edge of the river contained another parasite, schistosomiasis, or bilharzia. Working by or in canals and the banks of the river would have made it impossible to avoid this parasite, especially since most people in ancient Egypt seem to have gone barefoot. In modern Egypt, it is estimated that 20% of the population still suffer from schistosomiasis. Winds would have picked up sand from the deserts on both sides of the river, so the inhalation of sand, which would affect the lungs, was probably impossible to escape.
Understanding the diseases suffered by the ancient Egyptians has constantly changed with advances in modern medical techniques. Two developments, in particular, have been very important for the study of skeletal and mummy remains: the ability to retrieve DNA from ancient viruses and bacteria and the sophistication of tomography or CT scanning. The change in how ancient human remains can be studied, and how our understanding of the health problems of the ancient Egyptians has become so much clearer, can be seen in the various medical studies of the so-called Granville mummy over the past two hundred years.
The Granville mummy is that of an older woman dating to the Late Period (664–332 BCE), named Irtyersenu, that was purchased in Luxor in 1819 and was brought to London. Dr. August Granville unwrapped and autopsied the mummy, publishing a report on it in 1825. A large growth was discovered on one of the ovaries, and Granville pronounced that the woman had suffered from “ovarian dropsy,” or cancer, which probably caused her death.
Much later, in 1992, biopsies were done on the mummy, and both carbon and sand particles were found in the lungs. The mummy’s muscle tissues showed wasting, so Irtyersenu had probably been ill over a period of time before her death. The ovarian growth found by Granville was determined to have been a benign cyst, so it had nothing to do with her death. The latest study of the Granville mummy in 2009 carried out DNA analysis on tissues from the lung and gallbladder, and lipid biomarker analysis of mycolic acids from the lung and femur was also done. Both these analyses produced evidence of tuberculosis, and it would appear that the cause of Irtyersenu’s death was an active tuberculosis infection (Donoghue 2010).
Until recently, paleopathologists had to depend on bone lesions, to identify tuberculosis, although these bone changes could be caused by other conditions as well. In the 1990s, work with ancient DNA began to recover DNA from viruses, bacteria, and parasites, and in 1997, the first Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA sequence was recovered from a New Kingdom mummy from Thebes. This evidence was backed up by a macroscopic examination of the mummy that showed evidence of pulmonary tuberculosis. It has now been shown, through work with ancient DNA recovered from human remains at Abydos and Thebes, that for the period of pharaonic history from the Early Dynastic Period to the Late Period, roughly from 3000 to 664 BCE, the frequency of tuberculosis in Egypt remained at about 25% (Zink et al. 2003: 248). Another result of this DNA work is that different strains of tuberculosis have been distinguished. It has always been assumed that tuberculosis was passed on to the ancient Egyptians from cattle, because cattle were an important part of the ancient Egyptian agricultural economy, and they were slain for temple and funerary food offerings. It is now clear that there was no Mycobacterium bovis, the strain of tuberculosis carried by cattle, in ancient Egypt, and so people, not cattle, were the cause of tuberculosis in ancient Egypt.
Evidence for heart disease in ancient Egypt was first recognized in 1852, when artery calcifications were seen in the mummy of an elderly woman. The latest study of heart disease in ancient Egyptian remains, called the Horus Study, started in 2009 and reported on the CT scans of fifty-two mummies, ranging in date from New Kingdom to Roman times (1550 BCE–395 CE). Forty-four of the mummies had “identifiable cardiovascular structures,” and twenty of these mummies, or 45%, had “definite or probable atherosclerosis” (Abdelfattah et al. 2013). Calcifications were seen in the arteries of the legs and pelvis and in the aortic and carotid arteries. These twenty mummies had an average age of forty-five years; 55% were male and 45% were female.
One female mummy in the Horus Study supplied evidence that she may have had a prior heart attack. Lady Rai, who died between the ages of forty to fifty, had been a wet nurse in the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty and may have taken care of the future King Amenhotep I (1525–1504 BCE). The coronary arteries of Lady Rai could not be seen clearly, but the back wall of her heart had an area of calcification that might have been from a heart attack. Calcifications could also be clearly seen in her thoracic aorta.
The findings of the Horus Study seem to show that in the case of these mummies, atherosclerosis is age related and probably is also related to an upper-class lifestyle, because the people who were mummified were royalty, priests and their families, and high officials. These people most likely did not lead physically active lives, and they would have had regular access to expensive food, such as beef, which is high in saturated fat and raises blood cholesterol. However, further Horus Study’s CT scanning of mummies from ancient Peru, the southwest United States, and the late-nineteenth-century CE Aleutian Islands found another answer for heart disease. Atherosclerosis was found in 37% of all these other mummies, and these people were not elite; they were farmers and hunter-gatherers. These people would not have had risk factors leading to atherosclerosis, such as a high-fat meat diet or a sedentary lifestyle, but the risk factors that were part of their daily life were smoke inhalation, chronic infections, and parasites. It has been known for some time that infection and inflammation are risk factors for atherosclerosis, and a recent study also ties air pollution to the risk of developing atherosclerosis.
Ancient Egyptian mummies show extensive evidence of inflammation, infection, and the inhalation of smoke, sand, and rock particles. A CT scan was done of the Late Period mummy of a woman named Asru by the Manchester Museum in 2012. Her only known title was “Lady of the House.” Her father was mentioned, and he was called “The Document Scribe of the Southern Region,” so her family must have lived a somewhat elite life. It appears that she was probably fifty to sixty years old when she died, and she had osteoarthritis, and in particular, arthritis in her neck. A packet between her legs contained her intestines, which had been removed from her body during mummification. When examined, the intestines produced evidence of parasitic worms known as strongyles. Tissue taken from Asru’s lungs showed a cyst, caused by a tapeworm, as well as sand pneumoconiosis, caused by the inhalation of sand particles. Her bladder tissue provided evidence for schistosomiasis, another parasite. Examination of her teeth showed “marked periodontal infection.”
So, Asru had ongoing inflammation in her body from three different parasites, gum infections, and sand particles in her lungs. Asru was also found to have calcifications in her aorta and arteries. If a woman from an upper-class life suffered from these types of medical problems, what did hardworking peasant women suffer from? Unfortunately, only skeletal remains would be found of poorer class people, as they would not have been able to afford to be mummified, and the evidence for medical problems would be limited to what could be found in their bones.
Like heart disease, cancer has always been considered a disease of the modern world, but possible cases of metastatic cancer caused by breast cancer have been reported based on an examination of ancient Egyptian skeletal remains. A skeleton of an older adult female, forty-five years of age, dating to the Third Dynasty (2686–2613 BCE), was found at Deir el-Bersha, with many metastatic lesions throughout her skeleton that indicated breast cancer. Another possible case of metastatic breast cancer was found in the late Old Kingdom cemetery west of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. An older adult woman, fifty to sixty years old, had an extensive lesion on her right parietal bone and a much smaller cancerous lesion on one of her lumbar vertebrae. In 2015, reports came out describing a late Sixth Dynasty (2345–2181 BCE) female skeleton found at Qubbet el-Hawa in Aswan, displaying skeletal deterioration typical of that caused by the spread of breast cancer. The initial excavation report photos show lesions on a rib, the pelvis, and skull.
There has been extensive recent interest in malaria in ancient Egypt, some of which has come about because of the DNA analysis showing that not only Tutankhamun but also his grandfather, Yuya, and grandmother, Thuya, suffered from Plasmodium falciparum infection. Tutankhamun, in fact, had multiple malaria infections. Malaria can also be indicated in skeletons because of the effect of anemia, caused by malaria, on the bones. One scholar has established that 42% incidence of cribra orbitalia, or porous bone tissue in the eye sockets, was found throughout ancient Egypt in all periods, which means that there was always a high prevalence of malaria in the ancient Egyptian population.
Also compelling is the evidence coming out of the cemetery excavations at Tell el-Amarna, where human remains from the North Tombs Cemetery show a malaria rate of slightly more than 70%. The evidence is provided by a new set of criteria for identifying malaria based on skeletal material; five particular skeletal lesions, occurring together, can be indicative of a malaria infection. The skeletal remains in the North Tombs Cemetery are those of laborers and reflect a life of extremely heavy physical work and nutritional deficiency along with suffering from malaria. It is interesting that 75% of the individuals so far found in the North Tombs Cemetery are female, and the highest death rates are at the ages of seven to twenty-four years (Dabbs and Rose 2016: 9). The human remains in these burials seem to suggest that these young people were harshly treated forced laborers.
DOCTORS AND HEALERS
The title “doctor,” or swnw, in ancient Egypt was known from the beginning of the Old Kingdom around 2686 BCE. In fact, most of the evidence for doctors comes from the Old Kingdom, although there are not that many doctors; only around forty are known. In total, the number of doctors known from all of ancient Egypt were about one hundred. For the most part, these doctors seem to have belonged to the household of a high official or to the royal palace. A number of ranking titles were known for them, such as “Chief Doctor,” or “Greatest Doctor of Upper and Lower Egypt.” So far, there is no evidence proving that women were ever doctors in ancient Egypt. Clearly, women helped other women in delivering their babies, so the equivalent of midwives existed, but there is no woman that we know of who held the title swnw.
There is one woman named Peseshet from the later Old Kingdom (2494–2181 BCE) who holds the title “overseer of the doctors,” as well as “overseer of the ka-priests of the king’s mother.” These titles are written on a false door belonging to her and her husband, which was found in part of the mastaba tomb of their son, Akhtihotep, at Giza (Hassan 1932: 83, fig. 143). The son has a number of titles including being a scribe, an overseer of scribes, and an inspector of scribes. He is also an overseer of the ka-priests of the king’s mother, which is a title held by his mother on her false door as well. Perhaps he inherited it from her. Kanufer, Peseshet’s husband, is only given one title on the false door, “royal acquaintance.”
Scholars have been disagreeing for years on what this title of Peseshet actually tells us. The word “overseer” is written in masculine form, but the word “doctors” has a “t” that follows it, making it feminine. So, is she an overseer of lady doctors, but overseer was not made feminine?
It is possible, but it is also possible that the “t” was just put in the wrong place. There are a number of feminine overseers, and they all have the correct feminine form of overseer, with a “t” at the end of the word. Furthermore, if Peseshet is an overseer of doctors, does that make her a doctor? That is another question that has to be answered. In any case, if the inscription on her false door is correct in referring to lady doctors, there is no other known evidence for them.
Doctors in ancient Egypt were not known to have the specialties that doctors nowadays have. There were only really two medical specialties: problems having to do with the eyes and intestines. This must indicate that those two parts of the body often had problems. The doctors who specialized in eye problems tended to also be priests of the goddess Sakhmet and were considered to be at a higher rank than a doctor who was a swnw. Trachoma, a bacterial infection that can get in the eye from a fly, is a serious problem in modern Egyptian villages and can cause blindness. It must also have been an ancient problem. Ultraviolet light from the sun contributes to cataracts, and that certainly harsh, bright sunlight has always been a problem in Egypt.
Sakhmet was a fierce lion goddess, who was the bringer of plagues and diseases. If Sakhmet could cause these things, she could also keep them from happening, so it was important to worship and appease her. In the Late Period (664–332 BCE), there was a “House of Life” in the temple of Sakhmet at the city of Sais in the delta that seems to have been a center of learning for doctors. A doctor could also carry the title of sau, or magician, as when the cause of an illness was not clear, a magical solution was applied. Some doctors also hold the title of dentist along with being a doctor. Another type of healer was the “Controller of Serkhet,” a person who treated scorpion and snake bites. Serkhet was the name of the scorpion goddess. Both scorpions and snakes would have been a problem in ancient Egypt and continue to be in Egyptian villages nowadays as they get into houses and sting and bite people.
Doctors, as well as other people in villages who were considered “healers” and called upon to deal with medical problems, were probably fairly competent in dealing with problems that were visible. They knew how to set and put splints on a broken bone, such as an arm. They understood how to stop bleeding, stich cuts, and apply bandages. But, anything internal was not really understood. The ancient Egyptians did understand the beating of the heart and that it could be felt at different places in the body, such as the wrist, because there was a system of channels all through the body, which is explained in the Ebers Medical Papyrus. Other than that, the ancient Egyptians did not seem to have an understanding of the inner workings of the human body, because other substances than blood, such as air, water, feces, and urine, were also believed to move about in these channels. In fact, lumps and swellings and other similar problems were blamed on unclean material from the intestines traveling in one of these channels to a part of the body it should not be in. As one scholar stated, “This was lowering the blood vessels to the status of sewers” (Majno 1975: 130). The ancient Egyptians did not open up and study the inside of the human body; dissections were not carried out until Greek times in Alexandria about 300 BCE. Although ancient Egyptian doctors are often credited with brain surgery, they did not do any kind of invasive surgery inside the body. There is really no evidence for any kind of surgery other than possibly male circumcision.
A statue of the lion goddess Sakhmet, who was both the bringer of disease and the patroness of healers. She could both destroy and save. (ZzvetDreamstime.com)
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MEDICAL PAPYRI
There are ten medical texts known from ancient Egypt, almost all of which were written during the early New Kingdom. The most famous of these papyri is the so-called Smith Surgical Papyrus, somewhat misnamed as the ancient Egyptians did not carry out surgical procedures, as discussed earlier. The Smith Papyrus was written in the New Kingdom, around 1550 BCE, but because of some of the old words used in the text, the original probably goes back to the early Old Kingdom. It is attributed to an official of King Djoser (2667–2648 BCE) named Imhotep, who was believed to have been the architect of the Step Pyramid Complex. The Smith Surgical Papyrus deals with trauma to the body, and the text begins with wounds to the head and works down, although the text is broken away and stops at wounds and trauma to the chest. Each entry in the text explains the person’s wound in detail and then describes how the doctor should treat it, including just making the person as comfortable as possible because death is inevitable. Many of the wounds described are quite serious and seem to be the kinds that would result from an accident at a building site. Moving and setting heavy stones in place at a pyramid must have been quite dangerous. As the architect, Imhotep may well have overseen the treatment of injured workmen at the building site. In much later Ptolemaic and Roman times (332 BCE–395 CE), Imhotep was worshipped as a healer, so there is long tradition that ties him to having been a doctor.
One medical papyrus, the Kahun Papyrus, written in the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BCE), is dedicated to female problems. Flinders Petrie found it at the Middle Kingdom town of Lahun in the Fayum in 1889. The text is divided into thirty-four sections, each of which explains a different female physical problem and then states what medical prescription should be used to treat it. The papyrus was broken into pieces, and there are many gaps in the text making it difficult to understand at times. Most of the problems described in the Kahun Papyrus deal with the uterus. Problems and pain in various parts of the body, such as the gums and teeth, as well as legs and buttocks, are blamed on the uterus, which is quite odd, although even in Greek times, female health problems were often blamed on a uterus that had gotten “out of place.” Fumigation with incense or smoke, in which a particular substance has been burned, is often what is prescribed for uterine problems. In another medical papyrus known as Ramesseum III, which also has treatments for women, as well as children, incantations are written that must be recited over the prescription or over the patient to whom it is given.
The Kahun Papyrus explains a test that can be done that will show whether or not a woman is able to have a baby. If she puts garlic in her vagina, and she has garlic breath the next morning, then she is fertile. This is based on the idea that an “open” body, one that did not have channels inside that were blocked, would be receptive to sperm, and therefore, the woman could become pregnant. Once again, a test of this type points out the lack of understanding the ancient Egyptians had for the inner workings of the human body.
The Kahun Papyrus gives a “recipe” or a prescription, labeled “Not to become pregnant,” and the text that remains says to take crocodile feces and mix it up with fermented dough. The rest of the prescription is broken. Then a second “recipe” mentions putting sodium carbonate or saltpeter in the vagina, and a third “recipe” mentions mixing something with fermented dough and inserting it into the vagina. So, all three of these prescriptions for contraceptives are vaginal suppositories. The same prescription with the crocodile feces and fermented dough is found in Ramesseum Papyrus IV (Riddle 1992: 66–69).
MAGIC AND PRESCRIPTIONS
As the ancient Egyptians had no way to understand and treat a health problem that could not be seen, many health problems had to be treated with magic. For example, in a difficult childbirth, a clay representation of a woman lying in bed with her newborn baby would be put on or near the woman in labor, along with reciting the proper words, to have the actual women become like the representation. If bleeding would not stop, for example, after delivering a baby, an amulet, like the tyet of Isis, that looked somewhat like a knot, made of dark red carnelian, could be placed near the bleeding place and a spell would be recited to make the person’s blood become hard like the stone of the amulet.
The most commonly worn amulet, for both the living and the dead, was the wadjet eye. In the myth of Osiris, when Horus fought his uncle, Seth, to avenge the death of his father Osiris, Horus lost an eye. The wadjet eye was the eye Horus needed to become well and whole again, and it was considered to offer protection and health. The wadjet eye was added into necklaces and could be worn in the shape of a ring. The wadjet eye could be made in a variety of materials, such as faience and gold, as well as in semiprecious stones. Some amulets, such as the tyet, needed to be a particular color, but the wadjet eye could be any color. Typically, it was out of faience colored blue or green.
A magician was known as a sau, and both men and women could be magicians. Priests and doctors could be magicians as well. Magicians made protective amulets for people, spoke or wrote out charms for them, and also mixed prescriptions for health problems. The ingredients for a prescription might have to be collected at a certain place at a certain time of the day and have specific spells said, as ingredients were mixed together. The same precautions were taken for the making of an amulet as well. The tying of knots was very important, as knots were considered a barrier that something evil could not pass. Knots could also “catch” something bad, and one treatment for snake bites had to do with tying knots in a particular plant that was then applied to the snake bite to capture the venom. The number of knots was also important, and the number of seven knots appears in many of the magic spells.
The wadjeteye was the most common protective amulet worn in ancient Egypt. It symbolized health and wellness. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Much of the medical care described in the medical papyri was applying the proper prescription to the problem. Prescriptions could have elements of plants, minerals, and animals, cooked, ground, powdered, or soaked. For example, prescriptions for treating blindness tend to contain liver, either to eat or to apply to the eye, or else goose fat, with black-eye paint, or green-eye paint, or red ochre. Headaches often seem to be treated with fish, and in one case a picture of the sun god was to be drawn on linen with the blood of a certain fish and then tied on the head. However, the most common ingredient in ancient Egyptian prescriptions, especially those concerning wounds, was honey. Honey is a mild antibacterial and, if applied to a wound, at least cannot do any harm. Beeswax was also used in some prescriptions. Beer and various herbs and dates were also common. An interesting ingredient for some prescriptions, especially for a cold, and also burns, is milk from a woman who has born a male child, which was considered to be very nutritious and protective. There was even a special pottery vessel made to hold this particular kind of milk. It was made in the shape of a kneeling woman holding a baby, with the spout of the vessel on top of her head. A perfectly preserved New Kingdom example of this vessel is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Accession Number 1985.336).
DENTAL PROBLEMS AND CARE IN ANCIENT EGYPT
Studies of skeletons and mummies show that all ancient Egyptians, from peasant women to queens, suffered from terrible dental problems. It was not cavities that caused the problem, because there were not a lot of sweets in the ancient Egyptian diet, but attrition, or the wearing down of teeth over time. The most important ancient Egyptian food that was eaten on a daily basis was bread. The grain for the bread was ground on a stone with a stone tool, on a floor, which was typically packed dirt. Stone particles and sand during the process of grinding, as well as whatever sand or bits of pottery, got mixed in during the rest of the process of mixing dough and baking it. Wind-blown sand must also have gotten in everything, especially during sandstorms.
The attrition seen on ancient Egyptian teeth is extreme, especially if the person was old. One good example of attrition can be seen in the CT scan of the mummy of a woman named Meresamun, who lived in Thebes around 800 BCE, during the Twenty-Second Dynasty. She was a chantress, or a singer for the god Amun at Karnak Temple, holding the title “Singer in the interior of the Temple of Amun” (Teeter 2009: 21). She must have come from a privileged and important family, as she was buried in a beautifully decorated cartonnage coffin that must have been quite expensive. The CT scan of her mummy showed that all her teeth, all thirty-two of which were present, were “severely worn at the occlusal surfaces (where they meet when biting)” (Vannier 2009: 111, 115, fig. 69). Meresamun is thought to have been around thirty years old when she died. Her teeth were worn down, but not so much that she had begun to suffer from abscesses.
When the cusps of the teeth were worn away, the pulp in the middle of the tooth was exposed. Not only would this have caused terrible pain but it could also bring about infections, and unequal pressure on teeth, that would lead to abscesses. The most serious infections were caused by the root of the tooth becoming infected; this could be fatal if the infection from the root spread. Some mummy CT scans do not find any evidence for a cause of death other than possible dental abscesses. There is a mummy from the Twenty-Second or Twenty-Third Dynasty (945–715 BCE) in the collection of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore that was discovered in 1930, buried in a ruined part of the funerary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari on the West Bank of Thebes. Information about the mummy is based on CT scans done in 2008, as the mummy is still enclosed in its cartonnage coffin. There is no inscription on the coffin giving a name or title for this individual. She seems to have died between the age of fifty or sixty and had osteoarthritis, which is to be expected at her age. What the CT scans also show is that she had sixteen dental abscesses, and “her death probably resulted from septicemia caused by the abscesses” (Schulz and Seidel 2009: 102). It is interesting that in the place of one missing tooth, a false tooth of resin was put in to fill the gap.
The ancient Egyptian title “dentist” appears for the first time in the Third Dynasty (2686–2613 BCE) tomb of Hesyra at Saqqara. The complete title that he actually has is “Great One of the Dentists and Doctors.” There is not a great deal of evidence about what ancient Egyptian dentists could have done for their patients. No particular dental instruments have been found. It appears from prescriptions in medical papyri that treatment was undertaken to keep teeth from being lost, to fill in holes when they were there, and to try and treat the infections and pain. Materials such as flour, honey, and ochre, or else resin would be packed around a tooth to keep it from falling out. Cumin, carob, or willow bark would be applied to heal and control pain. Cinquefoil weed and sweet beer were also prescribed as a mouthwash to lessen pain.