Egyptian Surgery? Wow!

reply to post by Kandinsky


This is an amazing find and does show how advanced the Egyptians were in all areas. I hope they find more papyrus scrolls detailing the other wonders of this once magnificent ancient culture.

Thank you for the article and thread.

Kandinski, my man, what a super cool "can of worms" you opened this time?

Seriously now, super thread!! Both informative, and in a way that has been "missed" around here for quite some time, and with its own human twist.

What I did know about ancient Egyptian medicine was what my dentist had told me a few years back, during a cavity filling. He said that most dental "works" derived from ancient Egypt and, to some extent, they were still followed the same principal albeit not the same materials (tools and pharmaceutical substances). Cavity fillings, root canals, cap placements, you name it, they most probably did it!

About the more "exotic" surgeries (like brain surgery or open heart surgery, if covered in there - if at all performed back then) I will have to read the entire text (thanks for the link!!!)

As for the human aspect, maybe he was called by his wife to take the trash out and in doing so got run over by a chariot? Just an idea...

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by LucidDreamer85

 

The 'Dark Ages' is a European concept coined by 18th-19th Century historians. South American culture was at a high and the Middle East was in a 'renaissance' period. China and India were in resurgence.

My thoughts exactly. And, to take it one step further, even in Europe (well, parts of it) it was not so "dark" after all (an example could be the Byzantine Empire, which while a theocratic state retained a level of culture that exceeded most of the rest of Europe at the time).

Maybe it was "dark", where it was so dark, because of the prevalence of religion (ONE specific religion to be more accurate)?

reply to post by Kandinsky


This may predate the earliest accounts by hundreds of thousands of years or more.

Many believe that this earth has been destroyed many times over and Man always came back as the dominate species. This information could have been passed on from word of mouth from an advanced society like our own that had a world cataclysmic event and had to start over.

There is nothing really then to suggest this was information made by an ancient less advanced civilization. The Egyptians just copied this and who knows how many times it was copied before they got their hands on it.

reply to post by Kandinsky


why do so many people believe that the egyptians did not know anything when most of the proof shows that they had to be at least as smart and knew as much as we did, I believe very much more...

Originally posted by Kailassa

Originally posted by Dumbass
One question still remains.
Should we consider them as advanced or ourselves as primitive?

One more question still remains.
Should we consider ourselves to be advanced or primitive?

How can we be primitive, considering modern medicine technology?

Sure they had advanced stuff some 5000 years ago, but our stuff is like... 5000 years ahead of them

reply to post by JohnPhoenix
Hiya John, thanks for the reply. There's a couple of points I'd like to add.

There is nothing really then to suggest this was information made by an ancient less advanced civilization. The Egyptians just copied this and who knows how many times it was copied before they got their hands on it.

There's no evidence to suggest otherwise. The Smith Papyrus was copied from the earlier text using same hieratic script. Even comments in the margins were faithfully copied. Hieratic script was specific to Old Kingdom Egypt (3rd millennia BC). So we have an Egyptian media (papyrus) written in an Egyptian script (hieratic) located in Egypt.

The Old Kingdom loosely coincided with the early Bronze Age. The surgical instruments we see in the Kom Ombo relief couldn't be made from stone flakes or carved wood/bone.

Pre-Dynastic Egypt was populated by hunter-gatherers who gradually developed the settlements that would become major population centres like Thebes. They didn't have metal tools. 40 000 years ago, whilst Neanderthals were fading away in Europe, early Egyptians were using stone points to hunt with. Until around 7000BC, we have no evidence of metalworking elsewhere on the planet.

reply to post by LucidDreamer85

Were poppy seeds in the area during that time, or available for trade? I'm sure they could have made a weaker morphine like medicine with it to help take away some pain....

They were. Cassia and cinnamon, which grow in Ceylon, the East Indies and China, were used in the embalming process. Juniper berries, which do not grow in Egypt, were also used.

International trade is very old, especially in Eurasia, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean basin. We know from ancient papyrii that Egyptian and Mesopotamian merchants traded with their counterparts India and the Far East.

You may safely assume that any useful substance originating in some part of the old world would be available, or at least obtainable with difficulty, in the others.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


While many scrolls were copied, this one among them, there is little ground to expand this indefinitely. To say "this is a copy of a previous age" is one thing, to claim "this was copied God knows how many times from who knows how old a time" is another. the former is almost self-evident, the latter is pure speculation.

Let's just say the original scroll contained an accumulation of treatments for wounds (many of which appear to be common "stone-builder" wounds - with things, heavy things, falling down on people's heads and upper torsos), an accumulation that may have been gathered over centuries (but we cannot be sure of that without additional evidence, like an even older scroll tackling the same issues the same way).

reply to post by QuetzalcoatlAlien


i think the point of that theory is to find out who taught them to do these things in the first place... not to say we were stupid then, but brain surgery? let me rephrase.. successful brain surgery? it kind of lends credence to the ancient astronaut theory in my opinion.

Don't forget that as early hunters they would understand anatomy because of skining and gutting animals more so then the average westernized human in this day and age.
I think that in these early comunial family groups it wouldn't be much of a step to go from butcher to Doctor/Shaman to save a highly skilled family member.

reply to post by Kurokage
Excellent point. Death and butchery were a daily reality for all humans in those days and the days leading up to them. They'd nearly all know their way around an animal carcass and had been treating battle wounds etc for thousands of years before 3000BC.

Also look at some of the bone tools created by neolithic humans, very detailed and on a small scale, so early humans already had knowledge on how to work and cut bone very acurately.

pic of small bone hooks

reply to post by Kurokage
Nice images. If you check out the Shanidar Neanderthals, we're looking back over 40 000 years and suggestive evidence of medical treatment. It wasn't pretty, but people don't like to see loved ones, families or tribal members die needlessly.

I hadn't thought about it before...it's probably all inspired by the emotions of compassion and empathy. Other incentives came right behind.

Actually the Egyptians had more to work with than just animal carcasses, their priests were advanced in working with human cadavers for the embalming process. I'd say that dissection and the study of the human anatomy were well regarded by them.

I don’t know how I missed this initially, but awesome thread.

It is interesting that the line between butcher and surgeon can be quite thin. I am guessing that these same butchers were also the one who turned into basically the morticians, which also helped trained the surgeons of the group as well. I would think that hunter, butcher, mortician, and surgeon, must have been some of the first basic apprenticeships types of occupations. Some people may have done them all early n and diversified them later.

It is amazing how far some advancements in medicine have come, and yet how some have not changed much. I guess for some illnesses there isn’t much advancement to be made.

BTW S&F

[edit on 8/23/2010 by AlienCarnage]