Ancient Egyptian Mummies Reveal What Diseases Plagued the Civilization
Ancient Egyptian mummies reveal what diseases afflicted people in the great civilization, as well as the protective role the Nile could play
A mummy goes into a CT scanner, which helps investigate the tissues and bones without unwrapping the fragile linen.
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Ancient Egypt—a civilization that was one of the most powerful the world has ever seen and which lasted for nearly 3,000 years—was among the first to mummify its dead, providing us a window into its people’s culture, language and politics, as well as their health. Now a new study has uncovered intimate details of the disease landscape that set this civilization apart from others of its time, including a surprising role played by the society’s lifeblood: the Nile River.
For the study, published recently in Advances in Parasitology, University of Cambridge biological anthropologist Piers D. Mitchell analyzed data from 31 studies of mummies from Egypt and neighboring Nubia—another early civilization, dating back to 2000 B.C.E., in what is today southern Egypt and Sudan. In one study, 65 percent of mummies had parasitic worms. In another, 40 percent had head lice. Of the mummies that were tested for Plasmodium falciparum malaria (the most dangerous and deadly form of the illness), 22 percent had it. And based on two other studies, Mitchell estimates that about 10 percent had leishmaniasis, a deadly parasitic disease that causes internal organs to enlarge. “Egypt and Nubia were heavily burdened by the kind of parasites that are likely to kill you or cause a chronic burden of illness,” Mitchell says.
While infectious maladies would likely have been common among any civilization millennia before vaccinations, treated water or antibiotics, the Nile River played a unique role in the types of illnesses that took hold in ancient Egypt. Despite the region’s arid…
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