“Can Mummies tell us about Health and Disease in Ancient Egypt?”
On the 31st August it was our great pleasure to welcome back Dr Bob Loynes to deliver a talk on his specialist subject: the use of CT scans, and other techniques to investigate ancient Egyptian mummies.
He started by looking back at the history of mummy investigations, which began more as entertainment for the landed gentry but which was transformed by the use of X-rays by the end of the 19th century. Bob gave a quick re-cap of the methods used in mumification in ancient Egypt, and then went on to show how this has affected what materials were actually available for more modern methods of investigation. He gave a review of the analytical methods and of the imaging techniques which might be used to reveal the lives of the ancient Egyptians.
He then went on to discuss, in detail three case studies: Artemidorus, Takabute and the Lady of Meran. Artemedorus, from the Roman era, showed evidence of extreme trauma and the best guess is that he had been beaten to death! This began to sound like a CSI episode! Takabute, a 25th dynasty mummy turned out to be the remains of a young adult with good teeth apart from a large carie which would have been seriously painful! His remains showed the effect of a massive axe blow to the back – he would have died as a result of catastrophic bleeding – another case for “Silent Witness”! Finally, the Ptolemaic mummy seemed to have lived long but suffered dreadful effects of vitamin D deficiency. She was very short and suffered from scoliosis – perhaps she kept out of sight inside, and out of the sun. Whatever the reason for the vitamin deficiency, and bone analysis showed that poor diet was an unlikely cause, the condition led to limb fractures and heel fractures – she must have led a very hard and painful life.
Other cases were considered in less detail but, variously, showed signs of infant malnourishment, gall stones, arteriosclerosis (so it’s not just a modern disease!) tuberculosis, schistosomiasis (Bilharzia), cysticercosis, liver fluke infection and malaria. (Interestingly a form of malaria not known today).
It turns out that getting meaningful data on disease in ancient Egypt is not so easy, which is not surprising , but as more case studies are investigated we see evidence of chronic tropical disease, a life filled with pain and some horrific violence.
It was really good to hear from Bob once again and we hope that he will talk to us again before too long.