Mummy Had Earliest Case of Heart Disease

The mummy of Esankh, male, (1070-712 BCE), undergoing CT scanning. (Credit: Dr. Michael Miyamoto / UC San Diego)



An Egyptian princess who lived more than 3,500 years ago had the oldest known case of coronary artery disease, according to a new study which provides unique insights into the origins of atherosclerosis.
The mummified remains of the princess, who lived in Thebes (Luxor) between 1580 and 1550 B.C., were investigated by a team of Egyptian and U.S. researchers.
Using whole-body, multi-slice computed tomography scanning, the researchers found evidence of arterial calcification in the mummy, which is a marker for cardiovascular disease.
The analysis revealed that Princess Ahmose-Meryet-Amon, who died in her early 40s, had a casebook condition of atherosclerosis, a type of hardening of the arteries responsible for most heart diseases.
She showed signs of atherosclerosis in her aorta, carotids, coronaries, iliac and femoral arteries.
"Today she would have needed bypass surgery," said Gregory S. Thomas, director of Nuclear Cardiology Education at the University of California, Irvine, and co-author of the study.
Bad Teeth Tormented Ancient Egyptians

Ahmose-Meryet-Amon wasn't an isolated case. Commonly considered a result of our modern lifestyle, atherosclerosis was surprisingly widespread in ancient Egypt.
The researchers pointed out that 45 percent of the mummies they put through CT scans show signs of atherosclerosis. They presented their findings at the International Conference of Non-Invasive Cardiovascular Imaging in Amsterdam last week.
They investigated 52 Egyptian mummies, mostly from the Egyptian National Museum of Antiquities in Cairo, who lived between 1981 BC and 364 A.D.
The mummies included 33 males, 17 females and two individuals of unknown gender.
Recognizable arteries were present in 44 of the mummies, while an identifiable heart was present in 16.
Among the 44 mummies with hearts or identifiable blood vessels, 20 had definite or probable atherosclerosis.
Eight mummies showed carotid calcification, while severe atherosclerotic calcifications was seen in the arteries of the upper leg of a male scribe who lived during the 18th Dynasty.
"Overall, it was striking how much atherosclerosis we found," said Thomas.
NEWS: Wart Detected on Egyptian Queen Beauty

It's not the first time that plaque build-up has been found in the arteries of Egyptian mummies.
Atherosclerosis in ancient Egyptians was first identified in 1852 when physiologist Johann Nepomuk Czermak found calcific aortic atherosclerosis during the autopsy of a mummy belonging to an elderly Egyptian woman.
Other autopsies found histologic evidence of atherosclerosis in the aorta as well as in other large arteries on several 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummies.
However, the Horus study is the largest, non-invasive investigation on this disease. Spanning over two millennia, it detected evidence of atherosclerosis in almost all the dynastic eras of ancient Egypt, and  highlighted differences in the mummies’ socioeconomical status.
"Among the 25 mummies for whom social position could be determined, 10 were priests or priestesses. Atherosclerosis was less common in clergy than in non- clergy," wrote the researchers.
Cardiovascular diseases are now the world's leading killers, claiming more than 17 million lives in 2010.
Thomas and colleagues wondered how this "disease of modern life" could have affected the ancient Egyptians.
They appeared to eat a heart-healthy diet, including lots of vegetables, fruit and a limited amount of meat, bread and beer. Egyptians were active, and did not know tobacco or trans-fats.
Thomas and his co-principal investigator Dr. Adel Allam of Al Azhar University, Cairo, suggested that the cause for atherosclerosis could have been a genetic predisposition or an inflammatory response to frequent parasitic diseases.
However, they did not rule out a dietary effect.
The diet of Princess Ahmose-Meryet-Amon and the mummies belonging to higher social classes, could have been significantly different from that of common Egyptians.
As the daughter of Seqenenre Tao II, the last pharaoh of the 17th Dynasty, Ahmose-Meryet-Amon might have enjoyed more meat, butter and cheese.
Foods were also preserved in salt, which may also have had an adverse effect.
The researchers also found that the mummies studied had greater rates of atherosclerosis as they aged.
Those with hardened vessels had an average age of 45, while those who had clear vessel had an average age of 34.5
"Egyptian mummies are a most valuable source to study the evolution of cardiovascular disease," Frank Rühli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project at the Centre for Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zurich, told Discovery News.

Egypt’s Most Wanted: An Antiquities Wish List

Egypt plans to make a formal request to Germany for the return of a magnificently preserved bust of Queen Nefertiti, the Egyptian minister for antiquities announced on Tuesday. Exhibited in a series of German museums since its discovery in 1912, the 3,400-year-old statue is one of five high-priority artifacts scattered across the globe that Egypt hopes to repatriate. Find out more about the famous bust as well as the other leading items on Egypt’s antiquities “wish list.”

The Nefertiti Bust
Unearthed nearly a century ago by the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in Amarna, Egypt, this painted limestone bust of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s wife Nefertiti is considered one of the finest examples of ancient Egyptian sculpture. It was identified as a depiction of the fabled beauty because of the unique crown that she was known to wear. In addition to her good looks, Nefertiti is remembered as a major influence on the culture and religion of her time, and some scholars believe she may have ruled for a period after her husband’s death. Currently on display at Berlin’s Neues Museum, her bust was hidden in a German salt mine during World War II; the U.S. army found the precious artifact in 1945 and ultimately returned it to West Berlin. Despite multiple requests for the bust’s return, Germany has declined, maintaining that it was acquired legally and may be too fragile to move.
The Rosetta Stone
In July 1799, during Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, a French soldier discovered a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles north of Alexandria. The irregularly shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic. Because the ancient Greek text specified that all three passages had identical meaning, the artifact held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been dead for nearly 2,000 years. When the British defeated Napoleon in 1801, they took possession of the Rosetta Stone. Since then, it has remained in London’s British Museum except for a brief period during World War I, when museum officials moved it to a separate underground location to protect it from the threat of bombs.
The Dendera Zodiac
In the late 18th century, the French artist Vivant Denon drew a picture of an intricate bas-relief that graced the ceiling of a chapel dedicated to Osiris in the Hathor Temple at Dendera. The beautifully carved sandstone slab includes both a map of the sky featuring the signs of the zodiac and symbols representing the 360 days of the ancient Egyptian calendar. In 1820, with permission from Egyptian ruler Mohamed Ali Pasha, French archaeologists removed the ceiling from the chapel and spirited it to Paris for further study. Debate raged over the artifact’s age and significance until Jean-Francois Champollion, the same classical scholar who had used the Rosetta Stone to decode Egyptian hieroglyphics, recognized ideographs dating it to the first century B.C. Currently housed at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, it continues to enchant and intrigue historians, Egyptologists and astrologers.
Statue of Hemiunu
This life-size statue depicts Hemiunu, the Egyptian vizier who is believed to have overseen the building of the Great Pyramid an estimated 4,500 years ago. Found inside his tomb by German archaeologists in 1912, the limestone artifact was transported to the Roemer und Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, where it remains to this day. The seated figure boasts delicately carved features and rests atop a column covered in painted hieroglyphs. Many art historians consider it one of the finest portraits of the Old Kingdom.
Statue of Ankhhaf
Made of painted limestone, this bust portrays the prince and vizier Ankhhaf, who served his nephew, Pharaoh Khafre, during Egypt’s fourth dynasty. Like Hemiunu, Ankhhaf is thought to have been a builder of pyramids and other structures, perhaps including the Sphinx. Found in Ankhhaf’s tomb at Giza, his bust is remarkable for its lifelike portrayal of an elderly model at a time when most portraits were highly stylized. The relic was given as a gift by Egypt’s antiquities director to Harvard University and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, which had funded an expedition that uncovered the statue as well as a trove of other priceless antiquities during the 1920s. It has been on display at the Museum of Fine Arts ever since.

Did a Hippo Kill King Tut?

The exact cause of King Tut’s death is one of ancient history’s most impenetrable mysteries. A new and intriguing hypothesis has been added to the long list of competing theories: Was Egypt’s boy king slain by an angry hippopotamus?

Ever since the 1922 discovery of his remarkable tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, experts have puzzled over the circumstances surrounding Tutankhamen’s untimely death. A number of possible causes have been put forth, including foul play, gangrene and the genetic condition known as gynecomastia, a hormone imbalance that gives males a female appearance. Recently, DNA tests and CT scans of King Tut’s mummy led one group of researchers to conclude that the 19-year-old pharaoh succumbed to a fatal combination of malaria, a broken leg and a bone disorder.
Dr. Benson Harer has added a new theory to the mix: death by hippo. An Egyptology professor at California State University, Harer had previously established that Tutankhamen had severed ribs and was embalmed without his heart or anterior chest wall–a departure from the strictly codified mummification process of the era. In Harer’s view, this made the case for a crushing injury to the chest as the cause of death. Pointing to Egyptian pharaohs’ known fondness for hippopotamus hunting, he has now suggested that a lethal hippo bite inflicted the damage.

Even today, the hippopotamus kills dozens of people each year in Africa–more than any other animal—and is widely regarded as the continent’s most dangerous creature (not counting the mosquito, which carries fatal diseases that affect millions). Up to 15 feet tall and weighing in at 8,000 pounds, the massive and extremely aggressive beast can easily outrun humans on its squat, stumpy legs. Its cavernous mouth and enormous teeth can disembowel or decapitate a person with a single bite. Deaths often occur when victims inadvertently get between a female hippo and her calf, unleashing the highly protective mother’s fury. While hippos are no longer found in contemporary Egypt, they lived in the Nile and foraged along its banks in large numbers during ancient times. Notorious for capsizing fishing boats, destroying crops and stampeding, they were a menace to Egyptian society but inspired both fear and respect; several ancient Egyptian deities appear in the form of the hippopotamus, including the fertility goddess Taweret and Osiris’ wicked brother Seth. Images of pharaohs killing hippos were common in Egyptian art and ostensibly represented the triumph of good over evil. Indeed, the storied treasure trove found in Tutankhamen’s tomb includes two statuettes of the young king wielding a spear during a hippo hunt.
The hippopotamus’ symbolic connotations may explain why the boy king’s demise has remained shrouded in mystery, according to Harer. He speculates that the authorities concealed the exact cause of the pharaoh’s death to avoid political instability, fearing that the public might interpret it as a negative sign from the gods. Harer’s hypothesis is sure to raise a few eyebrows, but if he’s right, it could mean that King Tut’s run-in with a hippo has been kept under wraps since 1324 B.C.

Cleopatra Killed by Drug Cocktail? Legends allege that the last queen of Egypt died from a snakebite. But a new study could rewrite history.

• Cleopatra died from a lethal drug cocktail instead of a snakebite, according to a new study.
• Death by snakebite is a painful and unpleasant experience. Symptoms include vomiting, diarrhea and more.
• The last queen of Egypt more likely succumbed to a plant poison mixture.

"The Death of Cleopatra," painted in 1892 by Reginald Arthur. Cleopatra's suicide is often depicted in works of art the same way it has been portrayed in popular mythology -- with a poisonous snake. 

Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, died from swallowing a lethal drug cocktail and not from a snake bite, a new study claims.
According to Christoph Schäfer, a German historian and professor at the University of Trier, the legendary beauty queen was unlikely to have committed suicide by letting an asp -- an Egyptian cobra -- sink into her flesh.

"There was no cobra in Cleopatra's death,"
The author of a best-selling book in Germany, "Cleopatra," Schäfer searched historic writings for evidence to disprove the 2,000-year-old asp legend. His findings are to be featured on the German channel ZDF as part of a program on Cleopatra.
"The Roman historian Cassius Dio, writing about 200 years after Cleopatra's demise, stated that she died a quiet and pain-free death, which is not compatible with a cobra bite. Indeed, the snake's venom would have caused a painful and disfiguring death," Schäfer said.
According to German toxicologist Dietrich Mebs, a poison specialist taking part in the study, the symptoms occurring after an asp bite are very unpleasant, and include vomiting, diarrhea and respiratory failure.

"Death may occur within 45 minutes, but it may also be longer with painful edema at the bite site. At the end, the dead body does not look very nice with vomit, diarrhea, a swollen bite site," Mebs told Discovery News.
Ancient texts also record that Cleopatra's two handmaidens died with her -- something very unlikely if she had died of a snake bite, said Schäfer.
The Queen of the Nile committed suicide in August 30 B.C. at the age of 39, following the example of her lover, the Roman leader Marc Antony, who killed himself after losing the Battle of Actium.
At that time, temperatures in Egypt would have been so high that "it was almost impossible for a snake to stay still enough to bite," Schäfer said.
"The main problem with any snakebite are the unpredictable effects, because the venom of the snakes is highly variable. The amount they spent for the bite may be too low. Why taking a risk even to survive with such unpleasant symptoms?" Mebs said.

According to the researchers, who traveled to Alexandria where they consulted ancient medical texts, a plant poison mixture which is easily dosed and whose effects are very predictable could have worked much better.
"Ancient papyri show that the Egyptians knew about poisons, and one papyrus says Cleopatra actually tested them," Schaefer said.
Schaefer and Mebs believe that Cleopatra chose a drug cocktail made of opium, aconitum (also known as wolfsbane) and hemlock, a highly poisonous plant from the parsley family that is believed to have been used to poison Socrates.
The drug cocktail, Schäfer claims, was known at the time to cause a rather painless death within a few hours.
"Cleopatra reportedly carried out many toxicological experiments, an imitation of Mithradates VI. In her quest for the most peaceful and painless way to die, she would have observed the deaths of many condemned prisoners by many different poisons and combinations, including snakebite," Adrienne Mayor, author of the Mithridates biography "The Poison King," told Discovery News.
"In my opinion, Cleopatra would have taken a high dose of opium as a sedative and then succumb to a cobra bite within a half hour," Mayor said. "She would be sedated and calm, feeling no pain, as the cobra venom slows her respiration, and she breathes her last and dies."
According to Alain Touwaide, an international authority on medicinal plants of antiquity at the Smithsonian Institution and the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions in Washington , D.C., the drug cocktail would have technically worked well.
"A mixture of opium, aconitum and hemlock would have been a very intelligent combination. Opium and hemlock would have contributed to a painless death, easing the action of aconite, believed in antiquity to have deadly effects on the gastro-intestinal system. However, it wasn't common at all to mix vegetable poisons at Cleopatra's time," 
"Cleopatra is a constant source of legends and theories, and is often credited with the writing of treatises on poisons, cosmetics and medicines," Touwaide said. "I believe finding her body and applying forensic methods of analysis would be the only way to solve the mystery of her death."

Cleopatra Not First Female Pharoah of Her Line Queen Arsinoë II, an Olympian medalist, may have ruled Egypt 200 years before Cleopatra.

• A study into a unique Egyptian crown suggests that Queen Arsinoë II ruled Egypt as pharaoh.
• Arsinoë II had a life marked by dynastic murders, intrigue, sex and greed.
• Her crown was so special that it was later worn by Cleopatra and also used as a template by male descendants.

Queen Arsinoë II ruled Egypt as pharaoh 200 years before Cleopatra's time, claims new research. 

Cleopatra may not have been ancient Egypt's only female pharaoh of the Ptolemaic dynasty -- Queen Arsinoë II, a woman who competed in and won Olympic events, came first, some 200 years earlier, according to a new study into a unique Egyptian crown.
After analyzing details and symbols of the crown worn by Arsinoë and reinterpreting Egyptian reliefs, Swedish researchers are questioning Egypt's traditional male-dominated royal line. They suggest that Queen Arsinoë II (316-270 B.C.) was the first female pharaoh belonging to Ptolemy's  family -- the dynasty that ruled Egypt for some 300 years until the Roman conquest of 30 B.C.
While researchers largely agree on Arsinoë's prominence -- she was deified during her lifetime and honored for 200 years after her death -- the new study suggests she was in fact an Egyptian pharaoh with a role similar to the more famous Hatshepsut and Cleopatra VII.
One of the great women of the ancient world, Arsinoë was the daughter of Ptolemy I (366–283 B.C.), a Macedonian general under Alexander the Great who later became ruler of Egypt and founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty to which Cleopatra belonged.
With a life marked by dynastic murders, intrigue, sex and greed, Arsinoë may have been the most outstanding of Cleopatra's female predecessors.
"She was no ordinary woman. She fought in battles, and even participated in the Olympics, where she won three events for harnessed horses," Maria Nilsson, from the University of Gothenburg,
Married at the age of 16 to Lysimachus of Thrace, a 60-year-old general of Ptolemy I, Arsinoë earned great wealth and honors during her time in Greece.
When, 18 years later, Lysimachus died, she married her half-brother, Ptolemy Keraunus. The marriage then ended abruptly after Keraunus killed two of Arsinoë's three sons.
Arsinoë then returned to Egypt and married her brother King Ptolemy II, her junior by eight years.
A crown, which has never been found, but is depicted on statues and carved stone reliefs, was created especially for her.
Nilsson analyzed 158 Egyptian relief scenes dating from Arsinoë's lifetime to Emperor Trajan, spanning about 400 years, studying every detail of the crown, including hieroglyphic titles and relief scenes.
She found that the crown differed from the usual Egyptian royal headdress such as the khepresh (or blue crown), the white crown, the red crown, the double crown, the double feather plume and atef (or ostrich feather) crown.
Instead, it was made of four main elements: the red crown, symbolizing the rule of Lower Egypt, the ram horns, connected primarily with the ram god of Egypt, Amon, the cow horns and solar disc, symbolizing the goddess Hathor and the harmony between male and female, and the double feather plume, another important symbol of Amon.
According to Nilsson, these symbols show that Arsinoë's crown was created for a living queen who was supposed to be a high priestess, a goddess and the ruler of Lower Egypt at the same time.
"It means that she was proclaimed female pharaoh during her lifetime. She co-ruled Egypt, as the king of Lower Egypt, with her brother-husband Ptolemy II, king of Upper Egypt," Nilsson said.
Put on a level with the ancient goddesses Isis and Hathor, Arsinoë was considered a god during her lifetime and was honored for 200 years after her death at 45. A special shrine, the Arsinoëion, was built in her honor at Alexandria, and a festival, the Arsinoëia, was created for her.
Found in at least 27 variations, Arsinoë's symbolic crown was later worn by Ptolemaic queens Cleopatra III and Cleopatra VII and also used as a template by several male Ptolemy descendants.
"This profound study opens a new field of research and shows that the other Ptolemaic queens, especially the Cleopatras, tended to imitate Arsinoë II in their iconographic elements," Mona Haggag, professor of classical archaeology at Alexandria University, Egypt,
According to Carole Gillis, associate professor at the department of archaeology and ancient history at Lund University, Sweden, the study is important as it reveals that the Queen wore the crown in her own lifetime, in public view, with its symbols clearly understandable for everyone.
"This Queen was indeed a living King,"

Did Skin Cream Kill Egypt’s Queen Hatshepsut?

Did Hatshepsut inadvertently poison herself while trying to soothe her itchy, irritated skin? “There is a lot that speaks for this hypothesis,” said Helmut Wiedenfeld of the University of Bonn’s pharmaceutical institute. “If you imagine that the queen had a chronic skin disease and that she found short-term improvement from the salve, she may have exposed herself to a great risk over the years.”
Though ancient Egyptians certainly used remedies—some more effective than others—for a wide variety of conditions, Wiedenfeld thinks Hatshepsut’s lotion might have hailed from afar. “Egyptian physicians were general practitioners and good surgeons, but they were lousy internists,” he explained. “It is quite possible that they owe their knowledge of certain medications to their contacts with Persia and India, where the healing arts were very advanced even in antiquity.”



The German University of Bonn has just published the results of two years research on the contents of a bottle which belonged to Queen Hatshepsut. Far from containing the remains of perfume, as was thought, the bottle contained a mixture of palm oil and nutmeg combined with unsaturated fatty acids. This mixture, which cannot in any way resemble a face pack for beauty, strongly suggests a medication against a chronic skin condition, of the psoriasis type. It is known that Thutmosides suffered from a cutaneous affection apparently transmitted from generation to generation. We now know well the hereditary character of the psoriasis, which occurs when the immune system sends out faulty signals which speed up the growth cycle of skin cells.
But this preparation also contained potentially harmful aromatic compounds, including creosote and tar (which are used even today in small doses in the treatment of psoriasis) and unspecified amounts of benzopyrene, which the authors describe as "powerful carcinogen".
We know that at the time of her death, Queen Hatshepsut was fifty years old and was suffering from cancer, since, say those who have examined the mummy, she had bone metastases.
And the authors questioned whether the repeated use of this ointment could not induce her cancer.
Examine the medical facts. On the one hand, if all cancers can metastasise to the bones, those which do the most are in women, breast, kidney, thyroid. There is no clear link between these cancers and exposure to benzopyrene. On the other hand, the authors confuse "mutagenic" (a laboratory term) and "carcinogenic" (a clinical term): benzopyrene is classified as "powerful mutagen" but "probably carcinogenic to humans" (International Chemical Safety Cards (ICSCs) and Health Canada). Although there is some trans-cutaneous absorption (and especially of diseased skin), the most likely breast cancer suffered by the Queen was certainly not induced by this medication.


The use, by the queen, of a potentially effective cutaneous medication on a hereditary chronic disease of type psoriasis is an interesting enough discovery not to have to speculate further.
So the small bottle is not of course a fake, which is a hypothesis raised by some because it is a single vessel in two parts. Moreover, the mummy identified as Hatchepsut, mainly by Zahi Hawass' declarations, may well not be hers...