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To the list one can eventually add the use of electric fish to treat arthritic pain. At least one can read this claim in different books. I just wonder about the exact source of the claim, is it some Egyptian papyrus or maybe some Greek source?
The electric fish in question would have been the electric catfish, Malapterurus electricus. It is said that the doctors handled small specimens of the fish with wooden sticks and applied them on the parts of the patients body that hurt.
I read this several times and also heard it in a radio programm on ancient Egyptian medical practices. But in those instances they did not give the ancient source.
I am very interested in Egypt's medical innovations and remedies. These don't get enough attention. Plus, who knows how many other medicines the Egyptians had that we don't know about. In fact, I see a striking parallel with other Africans in Sub-Sahara whose medical practices were partially documented by European explorers and colonists. A perfect example would be vaccinations. Long before the advent of Edward Jenner the so-called 'Father of Vaccination', there were traditions among Africans of vaccinations. Although they did not have germ-theory they had something very similar to it in the form of a spirit-theory cause of disease which is also what the Egyptians and countless peoples around the world had. They believe that if a person recovers from an illness that person's blood can be used to protect others from the same disease, and this is especially true with smallpox. Which is why traditional African doctors and healers would use tattoo needles to inoculate people especially small children with blood or pustule from recovered victims. This makes me wonder if the Egyptians shared the same belief.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26249 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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One invention that is overlooked is the Egyptian pulley.
The Egyptians also probably had cranes since the early Bronze Age.
The crane is a type of lever and we know another commonly used lever device the Egyptians used since at least the Old Kingdom was the shadoof irrigation device.
It's unclear if the shadoof was invented independently by the Egyptians or was adopted from Asiatics since the earliest documented use of the device comes from the Sumerians. But one thing is clear, the device was uprgraded into more sophisticated forms.
One of which was the saqiyah which was invented by Meroitic Kushites. Another was the noria, which was invented by Egyptians in the 4th century BCE and was the first hydro-powered wheel. And from the noria came in the next century the so-called [url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_screw]Archimedes' screw pump[/url].
Despite the name, Archimedes did not invent it but was merely the first European to describe the mechanism when he visited Egypt.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26249 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Of course the simple 1st class level is the balancing scale.
This basic weighing device was most likely independently invented by the Egyptians and whose documented use goes back to the 4th millennium BC. Of course this device has a lot of religious significance being the device of the goddess Maat who personified balance and harmony, with the judgement of the dead being determined by the weighing of the heart.
By the way, the baboon god Aani was the god of measurements and equilibrium who is companion to Tehuti (Thoth) and his figure is shown seated at the very top of the scale.
Egyptians also invented the A-frame plumb level used to measure vertical lines in relation to surfaces or in relation to the stars. The device is attributed to the goddess Seshat.
^ Note the plumb stone is in the shape of an ib (heart).
The level is used to measure lines in relation to stars if part of a T-staff.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26249 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Most sources continue to spread the outdated notion that Egyptians did not know of the wheel until the to the contrary as shown in the paper below from a German scholar:
According to the paper the earliest evidence of the wheel in Egypt dates back to the Old Kingdom from at least the 6th dynasty in artistic depictions of siege ladders with wheels. There are actually many other depictions of wheels in Egyptian art although most of them tend to be inconspicuous.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26249 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Just as the Egyptians were among the earliest major producers of cosmetics and makeup which was likely derivative of tribal face and body paint, the Egyptians were also among the first industrial producers of oral hygiene products.
Humans actually didn't have oral issues of teeth, gums, etc that we have today until the Neolithic when cultivation and processing of foods with high carbohydrate content altered the microbiota of the mouth and gut. Thus issues like tooth decay had to be dealt with. The Egyptians invented a number of ways to deal with it.
One was toothpaste which was a concoction of sorts usually comprised of rock salt, dried flowers, spices, and mint crushed into a fine paste with a bit of water. The paste was applied by rubbing it onto the teeth and gums either with a finger, a plant leaf, reed, or shrub stick (but more on that later). The salt and spices were to kill bacteria while the flowers and mint freshened the breath. Unfortunately, toothpaste was expensive and were usually luxury items of the wealthy. Members of elite class especially royalty were known to use toothpastes with extra ingredients like ashes of ox hooves and burnt eggshells for strong antiseptic effects, though these harsh ingredients were known to cause gum bleed and teeth abrasion and wear despite the antiseptic effects. In fact a major cause of tooth decay and damage in ancient Egypt was abrasion and wear due to sand getting in foods like bread!
As far as toothbrushes, usually these were shrub sticks whose ends were chewed until fibrous and then used as a brush. The most common type used was from Salvadora persica plant whose leaves and wood have antiseptic properties and is known today by it's Arab-Islamic name 'miswak'. Even though Arabs like to take credit for the spread of its use in oral hygiene the miswak was used in antiquity and likely since prehistoric times as rural tribes in Africa still chew and brush their teeth with sticks from miswak or similar species of shrub. Unlike toothpaste which which were expensive commodities, the miswaks were much cheaper and more widely available to the public.
Last but not least is chewing gum. The first major chewing gum industry was started in ancient Egypt which used gum resin from acacia trees. This resin has antiseptic properties which made it useful for not only oral hygiene but also for and additive for food preservation as well as flavoring. In fact I remember our old poster Wally say how our modern word 'gum' comes from the Egyptian word 'komi' or 'kami'. Like the miswak, acacia gum was used in Africa since prehistoric times perhaps as far back as the paleolithic.
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^ ^ Here in Scandinavia we had chewing gums made of birch tar already 10 000 years ago. The most remarkable with some of these gums is that they have been preserved until today. And not only the gum itself but also DNA from the people who once chewed them, and also from some of the organisms living in the mouth of those people. This preserved DNA has given information about some of the early mesolithic people of Sweden but also from late mesolithic people from Denmark.
One wonder if DNA possibly could be preserved in some ancient, used chewing gums from Egypt?
-------------------- Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist Posts: 2685 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020
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^ Yes, the tradition of gum chewing likely goes back to paleolithic times, since it wasn't hard to collect resin from (non-poisonous) trees and use them for medicinal or hygienic purposes.
They didn't have Wrigley's, but ancient Scandinavian and Nordic cultures were big fans of chewing on tree bark. In 2007, a boy in Finland found chewing gum made from birch bark that was 5,000 years old. But at 10,000 years old, this birch-based gum offers scientists a chance to study ancient hunter-gatherer societies.
"DNA from these ancient chewing gums have an enormous potential not only for tracing the origin and movement of peoples long time ago, but also for providing insights in their social relations, diseases and food," says Per Persson, of the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, in a press statement.
In Scandinavian hunter-gatherer (SHG) culture, birch bark was used for a variety of purposes. Sometimes it was an adhesive substance for practices like sealing wood or ceramic vessels. Other times, it was strictly chewed for recreational purposes.
As for ancient chewed gum from Egypt, I really haven't heard any studies on it.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26249 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Maybe not an invention per see but an important social reform connected to the field of medicine:
Sick leave
quote:Paid sick days and physicians at work: ancient Egyptians had state-supported health care
We might think of state supported health care as an innovation of the 20th century, but it’s a much older tradition than that. In fact, texts from a village dating back to Egypt’s New Kingdom period, about 3,100-3,600 years ago, suggest that in ancient Egypt there was a state-supported health care network designed to ensure that workers making the king’s tomb were productive.
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