The remains of an ancient Egyptian individual provide not only evidence of metastatic cancer but also traces of a shocking brain surgery.
A research team re-analyzed a skull from the Duckworth Collection at the University of Cambridge (UK) and discovered evidence of a large cancerous tumor in the brain along with over 30 metastatic lesions.
These lesions were surrounded by incisions, indicating an attempt to remove the cancer surgically.
Notably, this skull dates back to around 2686-2345 BC!
The skull of an ancient Egyptian showing signs of surgery aimed at treating metastatic cancer lesions – (Photo: Tondini, Isidro, Camarós).
According to Live Science, archaeologists have long known that ancient Egyptian medicine recognized cancer early on, but it was unexpected that they considered surgical intervention for this disease so long ago.
To date, the oldest description of cancer dates back to around 1600 BC, written on the Edwin Smith papyrus in Egypt.
This record is believed to be a copy of a medical document from centuries earlier, describing several breast tumors but emphasizing that “there was no treatment” for them.
A relief depicting an ancient Egyptian physician in the ancient city of Abydos – (Photo: ANCIENT ORIGINS).
According to a publication in the scientific journal Frontiers in Medicine, the new findings represent the oldest evidence of surgical intervention directly related to cancer.
“This is where modern medicine begins” – co-author Edgard Camarós Perez, a paleopathologist from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), stated.
The research team also analyzed the skull of a woman who lived between 664-343 BC.
This 50-year-old female patient had a lesion suggestive of cancer along with two other lesions resulting from sharp object impacts.
The evidence indicates that ancient physicians treated the injuries of this female patient very well, although it seems they did not address the cancer.
This suggests that by that time, their research into treating this disease had not yet yielded successful results.
Dr. Camarós Perez noted that the new findings indicate cancer was a “frontier” in the medical knowledge of ancient Egyptians, a disease they may have spent centuries experimenting with but had not found a successful treatment for.
Nevertheless, considering the challenges of this disease even in modern times, what the Egyptians achieved centuries BC is truly commendable.
The research team hopes to find even more ancient evidence to determine when cancer began to be studied by ancient medicine.
“If over 4,000 years ago, ancient Egyptians attempted to understand cancer at a surgical level, we are confident that this is just the next step in something that began thousands of years ago” – Dr. Camarós Perez stated.
