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Study: Scribes in ancient Egypt had really poor posture as they worked

Statues depicting the high dignitary Nefer and his wife (Abusir, Egypt).

Enlarge / Statues depicting the high dignitary Nefer and his wife (Abusir, Egypt). (credit: Martin Frouz/Czech Institute of Egyptology/Charles University.)

Repetitive stress injuries are a common feature of modern life, especially for office workers who spend a good chunk of their working days at a desk typing on a computer. Apparently, scribes in ancient Egypt suffered from their own distinctive repetitive stress injuries, according to a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports that provides fresh insights into how these scribes lived and worked during the third millennium BCE.

Egyptian kings, royal family members, and other elite people from this Fifth Dynasty era were buried in tombs in the acropolis at Abusir rather than at neighboring Giza, which by then had largely filled up thanks to all the activity during the Fourth Dynasty. The Czech Institute of Egyptology at Charles University in Prague has been conducting research at the site since 1960, leading to the discovery of nearly 200 tombs dating back to the Old Kingdom (between 2700 and 2180 BCE). The first human skeletons were excavated in 1976, and there are currently 221 Old Kingdom skeletons in the collection, 102 of which are male.

Scientists started looking into the health status and markers for specific activities in 2009, but it wasn't until quite recently that there were enough skeletons to conduct a comprehensive study. That's what Petra Brukner HavelkovΓ‘ of Charles University and the National Museum in Prague, Czech Republic, and colleagues set out to do, analyzing the remains of 69 adult males of different social status and different ages at which they died.

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Study: Three skulls of medieval Viking women were deliberately elongated

Artificially modified skull from the female Viking individual in Havor, Hablingbo parish, Gotland.

Enlarge / Artificially modified skull from a female Viking individual in Havor, Hablingbo parish, Gotland. (credit: Β© SHM/Johnny Karlsson 2008-11-05/CC BY 2.5 SE)

German archaeologists discovered that the skulls of three medieval Viking women found on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea showed evidence of an unusual procedure to elongate their skulls. The process gave them an unusual and distinctive appearance, according to a paper published in the journal Current Swedish Archaeology. Along with evidence that the Viking men from the island may have deliberately filed their teeth, the discovery sheds light on the role body modification may have played in Viking culture

When people hear about Viking body modification, they probably think of Viking tattoos, particularly since the History Channel series Vikings popularized that notion. But whether actual Vikings sported tattoos is a matter of considerable debate. There is no mention of tattoos in the few Norse sagas and poetry that have survived, although other unusual physical characteristics are often mentioned, such as scars.

The only real evidence comes from a 10th century travel account by an Arab traveler and trader named Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, whose travel account, Mission to the Volga, describes the Swedish Viking traders ("Rusiyyah") he met in the Middle Volga region of Russia. "They are dark from the tips of their toes right up to their necksβ€”trees, pictures, and the like," Ibn Fadlan wrote. But the precise Arabic translation is unclear, and there is no hard archaeological evidence, since human skin typically doesn't preserve for centuries after a Viking burial.

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Ancient Egyptian skull shows evidence of cancer, surgical treatment

Skull and mandible 236, dating from between 2687 and 2345 BCE, belonged to a male individual aged 30 to 35.

Enlarge (credit: Tondini, Isidro, CamarΓ³s, 2024.)

The 4,000-year-old skull and mandible of an Egyptian man show signs of cancerous lesions and tool marks, according to a recent paper published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine. Those marks could be signs that someone tried to operate on the man shortly before his death or performed the ancient Egyptian equivalent of an autopsy to learn more about the cancer after death.

β€œThis finding is unique evidence of how ancient Egyptian medicine would have tried to deal with or explore cancer more than 4,000 years ago,” said co-author Edgard CamarΓ³s, a paleopathologist at the University of Santiago de Compostela. β€œThis is an extraordinary new perspective in our understanding of the history of medicine.”

Archaeologists have found evidence of various examples of primitive surgery dating back several thousand years. For instance, in 2022, archaeologists excavated a 5,300-year-old skull of an elderly woman (about 65 years old) from a Spanish tomb. They determined that seven cut marks near the left ear canal were strong evidence of a primitive surgical procedure to treat a middle ear infection. The team also identified a flint blade that may have been used as a cauterizing tool. By the 17th century, this was a fairly common procedure to treat acute ear infections, and skulls showing evidence of a mastoidectomy have been found in Croatia (11th century), Italy (18th and 19th centuries), and Copenhagen (19th or early 20th century).

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