Medicine in Ancient Egypt

           Up until now my blog has focused mostly on ancient Greek and Roman practices in regards to abortion, but I wanted to see how other ancient societies, especially Egypt, dealt with this age old practice. The earliest surviving medical writings from Egypt are different papyri, the first being the Kahun Medical Papyrus and in it scholars found that the ancient Egyptians not only had clear knowledge of many of the diseases encountered today, but also dabbled with birth control. While abortion isn’t strictly mentioned, the use of contraceptives is. John Riddle’s book Contraception and abortion from the ancient world to the Renaissance does a great job outlining some very unique contraceptives.

                          Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology - Kahun Medical Papyrus


          Recipe I (Kahun. No. 21 [3, 6]):
          Not to become pregnant, that …’
          Feces of crocodile, smash up with fermented dough [or paste];
          soak …

          Recipe 2 (Kahun 22 [3, 7]);
          6/7 Pint of honey; sprinkle in her vagina.
          This is done with [hr, shm] of soda/saltpeter.
          Another Recipe.
          […mashed up] with fermented dough/paste, sprinkle in her vagina …

                Also, what I found really interesting was that ancient Egyptians revered animals as they were associated with different Egyptian gods. For example, crocodiles are associated with Seth, the god of chaos “who is also associated with thunder, desert and infertility” and according to Riddle, “Ancient Egyptian uterine amulets often have Seth on them”, thus to the ancient Egyptians, it made sense to use crocodile feces if one was planning to have an abortion or simply as a contraceptive. While this is quite different than the practices that were employed in ancient Rome and Greece, there are still some similarities especially as these recipes can be seen as herbal abortifacients which the Greeks used extensively. It’s also interesting to see that there are not many sources outside of these papyri that deal with pregnancy in ancient Egypt. One of the suggested reasons for this is that physicians and scientists were men and they were not involved during the pregnancy.
             The second ancient Papyrus (Ebers) provided me with much more information regarding ancient practices and while some scholars argue about the correct translation of the Papyrus, there are some passages which discuss how to perform an abortion using common herbs. It was also interesting to see that the Ebers papyrus is supposedly only a transcript of a much older book. “Although the Ebers scroll was written between 1550 and 1500 B.C.E, internal evidence indicates that the scribe writing it had before him a copy of a much earlier version. The prescriptions date back to the Old Kingdom” (Riddle, p.35).

                                                                    Ebers Papyrus
       One of the translated recipes reads: “To cause a woman to stop pregnancy in the first, second, or third period [trimester]:
          Unripe fruit of acacia
          Colocynth
          Dates
          Triturate with 6/7th pint of honey; moistern a pessayt of plant fiber and place in the vagina

        The reason that this recipe is so illuminating is not only because of the listed ingredients which have shown to be amazingly effective abortifacients in clinical trials, but it also shows that the ancient Egyptians knew the different stages of pregnancy really well (Riddle, p.36). This provides even more evidence for Homer’s claim in the Odyssey “In Egypt, the men are more skilled in medicine than any of human kind”.