Armamentaricum Chirurgicum et Plantis surgical instuments and plants in ancient Egypt

Ferencz, Andrea and Petrovics, Alica and Blázovics, Anna and Fehér, Daniella and Csukás, Domokos and Berner-Juhos, Krisztina and Szabó, Györgyi and Sándor, József and Győry, Hedvig (2022) Armamentaricum Chirurgicum et Plantis surgical instuments and plants in ancient Egypt. In: Aegyptus et Pannonia VII. Magyar-Egyiptomi Baráti Társaság, Ókori Egyiptomi Bizottság, Budapest, pp. 175-230. ISBN 9786156571014

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Abstract

Throughout the 3000 years of the ancient Egyptian history, medicine itself, its treatments, and options changed slowly in each era. From the period of the New Kingdom the Edwin Smith papyrus written down latest around 1600-1550 BC, describes the surgical interventions of the time in a highly rational way. Doctors practised this type of medicine on a scientific basis, while magical spells were also recommended for some ailments. The Ebers papyrus,written nearly at the same time is one of the earliest records of drug therapy as conservative treatment with sketchy prescriptions, but also contains some surgical protocols. They are fundamental in medical history. Even after the decline of the pharaonic culture, the knowledge and tools of ancient Egyptian surgeons lived on in Greek and Roman medicine. Surgery is a manual activity. However, a skilled hand needs good tools to be effective. From the Neolithic onwards and up until the 19 th century, healing persons were forced to make their own surgical instruments, similar to household utensils, partly from materials found in nature and partly from materials that they have transformed. The oldest extant Egyptian instrument- depiction is the relief on the wall of the double temple of Haroeris and Sobek at Kom Ombo, built in the Ptolemaic period. In the Roman reliefs, we can see that ancient Egyptian doctors used knives, scalpels, forceps, scissors, saws, probes, trepan as direct instruments for surgical interventions, while cupping vessels, incense burners, beaked cups and vessels, bags, amulets, scales, herbal vessels, or sponges are represented as accessory tools in the patients’ perioperative actions. Their shape has remained essentially unchanged for hundreds of years In this article we investigate the ancient Egyptian roots by collecting and investigating the few occurrences of pharaonic surgical instruments as objects or mentioned in texts, considering the functions used nowadays. Based on practical viewpoint we are also working on the identification of the possible ways extant tools could be used, looking among them especially for those, which were made of vegetable material, or for those, which may have originated from plants. We thus describe “target tools” and operating instruments that were among the first to be developed and used for various surgical tasks and movements.

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