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 condition. Now, new evidence from a skull more than 4,000 years old reveals that ancient Egyptian doctors may have tried 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 is 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 several lesions believed to represent bone damage from 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 computed tomography (CT), they detected signs of cuts around the tumors, suggesting that sharp metal instruments were used to remove the growths. Scientists reported the findings on Wednesday (29) in Frontiers in Medicine magazine.
“It was the first time that humanity had surgically dealt with what we now call cancer,” said the study’s senior author, Dr. Edgard Camarós, professor 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 cuts were made while the person was alive, we are talking about some type of treatment directly related to the cancer,” he said. But if the cuts were made posthumously, “it means this is a medical autopsy exploitation related to cancer.”
In any case, “it is impressive to think that they performed a surgical intervention”, added Camarós. “But we can’t really distinguish between a treatment and an autopsy.”
Medical knowledge and mastery
Medicine in ancient Egypt, documented extensively in medical texts such as the Ebers Papyrus and the Kahun Papyrus, was indisputably sophisticated, and the new discoveries offer important direct evidence of that knowledge, said Ibrahem Badr, associate 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 medicine in other ancient civilizations,” said Badr, who was not involved in the new research. “It was directly based on surgical practices.”
But while this 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 solid new 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 into the realm of scientific and medical certainty.”
Scientists also found cancerous lesions in a second skull from the Duckworth collection. Labeled E270 and dated 664 BC to 343 BC, it belonged to an adult woman at least 50 years old. The team identified three lesions in the specimen 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 intervention for head injuries.
“That person survived many years after the trauma,” Camarós said.
Writing Cancer Biography
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 skulls. By carrying out 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. “Using 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 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 centered on the visible tumors that the disease produced. The earliest recorded observation of cancer is in an Egyptian medical text known as the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, which dates from approximately 3000 BC to 2500 BC. This text contains 48 case studies covering various diseases, including a description of breast cancer.
While ancient Egyptian healers may have known about cancer, treating it was another story. Most medical cases in the Edwin Smith Papyrus included mention 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 limit to their medical knowledge.”
However, the incisions around the cranial tumors suggest that healers in ancient Egypt were trying to change this by surgically removing the tumors to cure the patient or to examine the tumors more closely.
“We have these two possibilities: in a way, they tried to treat him, or they tried to understand him medically, probably with the aim of treating him in the future,” Camarós said. “I think this is a milestone in the history of medicine.”
Editor’s note: Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has been published in Live Science, Scientific American, and How It Works magazine.
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