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Cancer is often considered a disease of the modern era. However, medical texts from ancient Egypt indicate that healers of the time were aware of the disease. Now, new evidence of a skull more than 4,000 years has revealed that ancient Egyptian doctors may have attempted to treat certain types of cancer with surgery.
The skull belonged to a man who was between 30 and 35 years old when he died and resides in the collection of the Duckworth Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Since the mid-19th century, scientists have studied the scarred surface of the skull, including multiple lesions thought to represent bone damage caused by malignant tumors. Archaeologists consider the skull, labeled 236 in the collection, to be one of the oldest examples of malignancy in the ancient world, dating to between 2686 BC and 2345 BC.
But when researchers recently took a closer look at the tumor scars with a digital microscope and microcomputed tomography (CT) scans, they detected signs of cut marks around the tumors, suggesting that sharp metal instruments had been used to remove the growths. The scientists reported the findings Wednesday in the journal Frontiers in Medicine.
“It was the first time that humanity had surgically dealt with what we now call cancer,” said the study’s senior author. Dr. Edgard Camarósprofessor in the history department at the University of Santiago de Compostela in A Coruña, Spain.
However, it is not known whether the healers attempted to remove the tumors while the patient was still alive, or whether the tumors were removed after death for analysis, Camarós told CNN.
“If these cut marks were made with this person alive, we are talking about some type of treatment directly related to cancer,” he said. But if the cut marks were made posthumously, “that means this is a medical autopsy exploration in relation to this cancer.”
Either way, “it’s incredible to think that they performed a surgical intervention,” Camarós added. “But we can’t really distinguish between a treatment and an autopsy.”
Medical ‘knowledge and mastery’
Medicine in ancient Egypt, extensively documented in medical texts such as the Ebers Papyrus and the Kahun Papyrus, was unquestionably sophisticated, and the new discoveries offer important and direct evidence of that knowledge, he said. Dr.Ibrahem Badrassociate professor in the department of antiquities restoration and conservation at Misr University of Science and Technology in Giza, Egypt.
“We can see that ancient Egyptian medicine was not based solely on herbal remedies, like the medicine of other ancient civilizations,” said Badr, who was not involved in the new research. “It depended directly on surgical practices.”
But in the meantime evidence of antiquity was well studied during the 19th and 20th centuries, 21st century technologies like those used in the new study are revealing previously unknown details about the medical arts of ancient Egypt, Badr added.
“The research provides a new and solid direction for reevaluating the history of medicine and pathology among the ancient Egyptians,” he said. The study authors’ methods “transition their results from the realm of uncertainty and archaeological possibilities to the realm of scientific and medical certainty.”
Scientists also found cancerous lesions on a second skull from the Duckworth collection. Labeled E270 and dated to 664 BC to 343 BC, it belonged to an adult woman at least 50 years old. The team identified three lesions in the sample where malignant tumors damaged the bone.
Unlike skull 236, E270 showed no signs of disease-related surgery. But the woman’s skull contained long-healed fractures, showing the success of previous medical interventions for head injuries.
“This person survived many years after that trauma,” Camarós said.
Writing the ‘biography’ of cancer
The analysis of both skulls “is remarkable research that provides new and clear scientific evidence about the field of pathology and the development of medicine among the ancient Egyptians,” Badr said.
Badr, who collaborates with scientists from Europe and the United States to study atherosclerosis (accumulation of plaques in arterial walls) in ancient Egyptian mummies, explained that his work follows the same scientific direction as the investigation of the skull. By performing detailed examinations of mummies using 21st-century technologies such as CT scans and DNA sequencing, Badr and his colleagues hope to further illuminate the extent of medical knowledge in Egyptian antiquity.
“There is an urgent need to reevaluate the history of Egyptian medicine using these scientific methodologies,” Badr said. “By utilizing these modern techniques, we will be able to study and gain a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of medicine in ancient Egypt.”
The new discoveries also help complete part of the “dark biography” of cancer, adding a chapter that was written thousands of years ago, Camarós added.
“The more we look into our past, the more we know that cancer was much more prevalent, much more present than we thought,” he said.
A medical milestone
The ancient Egyptians’ perception of cancer revolved around the visible tumors that the disease produced. The first recorded observation of cancer is in an ancient Egyptian medical text known as Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, which dates back to around 3000 BC to 2500 BC. This text contains 48 case studies covering a variety of diseases, including a description of breast cancer.
Although healers in ancient Egypt may have been aware of the existence of cancer, treating it was another matter. Most of the medical cases in the Edwin Smith papyrus included mentions of medicines or healing strategies. But there were none for the breast cancer patient’s tumors, Camarós said.
“It specifically says there is no treatment,” he said. “They realized this was a frontier when it came to medical knowledge.”
However, the incisions around the skull tumors suggest that ancient Egyptian healers were trying to change this by surgically removing the tumors to cure the patient or to examine them more closely.
“We have these two possibilities: in a way that they tried to treat it, or in a way that they tried to understand it medically, in terms of probably treating it in the future,” Camarós said. “I think it’s a milestone in the history of medicine.”
Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American, and How It Works.
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