Medicines in Ancient Egypt | Middle East And North Africa

Home | Category: Education, Health and Transportation

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MEDICINES

<br/> 20120216-Toilet_box_and_various_vessels 2.jpg Homer called the ancient Egyptians "a race of druggists." Hieroglyphics depicting senna leaves, a cathartic found in Egypt and one of the world's first known medicines, were found in the tomb of a court physician dating back to 4500 B.C. A variety of medicines were mentioned in the Petri Papyrus (1850 B.C.) and Ebers Papyrus (1550 B.C.). Many of the drugs named in these papyruses — rambling collections of hieroglyphic prescriptions and incantations — are still used today.

Many ancient Egyptians believed also that the remedy for all ills was to be found in some particular plant, such as the Dgain tree — probably the olive tree. In an “ancient book of wisdom for mankind," amongst other things we find the following remarks about this tree: "If the boughs are crushed in water and put upon a head which is ill, it will become well immediately, as if it had never been ill. For the complaint of indigestion (?) let the patient take some of the fruit in beer and the impure moistness will be driven out of his body. For the growth of a woman's hair let the fruit be pounded and kneaded into a lump; the woman must then put it in oil, and anoint her head with it." “In spite of these virtues vouched for by the ancient book, the tree does not appear to have played a great part in medicine — we meet with it comparatively seldom in the prescriptions. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

By far the greater number of the drugs employed were of vegetable origin; so numerous indeed were the fruits and herbs in use, that a good knowledge of botany was essential to every Egyptian physician. Many plants were rare and unknown to doctor. A typical medicine recipe calls for things like “the herb called Smut grows on its belly like the plant Qedet, it has blossoms like the lotus and its leaves look like white wood. "

Ingredients of animal origin were more rare; amongst these preference seems to have been given to substances most repulsive to us. The idea prevailed in Egyptian as in all folk-medicine, that a remedy ought not to be too simple or too commonplace. A prescription ought if possible to contain many ingredients — there, was in fact a poultice which was composed of thirty-five different substances; it was also necessary that the ingredients should be rare and also if possible disgusting. Lizards' blood, the teeth of swine, putrid meat and stinking fat, the moisture from pigs' ears and the milk of a lying-in woman, and a hundred other similar things, were favorite ingredients. Above all, certain substances valued for the healing craft were the same that were also revered so highly by the apothecaries of our 17th century — excreta of all kinds. The excreta of adults, of children, of donkeys, antelopes, dogs, pigs, cats, and other animals, down to the “dirt of flies found on the walls "; all this is enough to disgust any one.

It would not however be right to deny the possibility of results to Egyptian medicine. Even with the recipes described above, good cures would be possible supposing that combined with senseless but harmless ingredients they contained even one substance that was efficacious. In many recipes we can discover one such useful ingredient — as a rule something quite common, like honey, beer, or oil. It would have been sufficient to use that alone, but as no special good result could be expected from anything so commonplace, it was thought better to add to it all manner of possible and impossible things. In consequence, many recipes against ills of one class contain several identical substances, though the others vary; the efficacy depends on the former. This explains also the astonishing number of recipes; doctors in search of novelties might change the various indifferent ingredients as they liked, whilst the remedy itself was neither the better nor the worse.

The outward form of some of these old recipes is more satisfactory than the contents we have described. In perspicacity and brevity there is nothing to be desired. In the first place there is a superscription giving the object of the prescription: “Remedy to draw the blood from a wound "; then come the ingredients with the statement of the quantities: Wax, Fatm Date-wine (?) Honey Boiled horn; then (generally in abbreviated form) some necessary remarks about the preparation and use of the remedy: “boil, mix together, make fomentations therewith four times. “All manner of fine distinctions were observed; there were distinct terms for pound and triturate, for mix and mix together, for fomentations and embrocations, to anoint and apply to, and in his prescription-book the doctor would carefully correct a somewhat ambiguous term into one more exact.

Different Types of Ancient Egyptian Medicines

Bag of Natron from Tutankhamun's tomb

Medicines could be taken in various ways, either as a drink, or in the form of pills, or in embrocations or fomentations. Inhalation was also employed; thus in the illness setyt, a common complaint of the stomach, the remedy for which was generally warm milk with various additional substances, it was also useful to take the plants T'e'am and 'Aniamn in equal parts, “to reduce them to fine powder, to put them on the fire, and to inhale the rising steam through a reed. " The following recipe was more complicated but more efficacious; it was to be employed in the same illness: “The seeds of the sweet woodroof The seeds of Mene The plant A'an reduce to powder. Then take seven stones and warm them at the fire. Take one of the same, put some of the remedy on it and put a new pot over it. Knock a piece out of the bottom of the pot and stick a reed into the hole. Put thy mouth to this reed so as to inhale the rising steam. Do the same with the other six stones. Afterwards eat some fat, such as fat meat or oil." [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

It is particularly interesting to compare the number of recipes in the separate sections of the medical books, for in this way we can judge pretty well of the comparative frequency of the various diseases. The remedies for diseases of the eyes occur so frequently as to form a tenth part of the whole; this shows how common were such complaints. Probably in old times ophthalmia was as prevalent in Egypt as it is at the present day, and as this terrible scourge is now due in great measure to the want of cleanliness amongst the people, we may assume that the same conditions probably existed in old times. The same unwashen children with their eyes discharging, and their faces literally covered with flies, probably formed the same inevitable figure-groups in the street scenes as they do now.

The remedies are also very numerous “to kill worms “or “to drive out the disease which gives rise to worms. " The latter expression is due to the singular idea that worms are not the cause but rather the effect, the symptom of the disease. They thought that (in consequence, perhaps, of an obstruction) a gathering formed inside the human body, "which could find no way to discharge; it then became corrupt and was transformed into worms. " "

The department of women's diseases was of course as extensive in Egypt as it has been and is in all countries, and in addition to the mother, the child at her breast was not forgotten. We learn that from the first cry one could foretell its chance of life; if he cried ny, he would live, if he cried openly he would die. " We learn also how it was possible to tell the goodness of the mother's milk from the smell,' and a recipe is given for quieting the immoderate crying of children. The remedy which worked this miracle was a mixture of the seeds of the plant of the everlasting fly-dirt; the second ingredient was of course useless, the first may have been most efficacious, especially if the plant Shepcu was the same as that now used to quiet children in Upper Egypt — the poppy.

Household Medicines Used in Ancient Egypt

We now come to the household remedies, which in Egypt formed a strange appendage to medicine. The doctor was not only required to furnish cosmetics, to color the hair, to improve the skin,' and to beautify the limbs," but people entreated his assistance against house vermin. He was ready to give advice. In order “to drive “fleas, that plague of Egypt, “out of the house," he would order the house to be sprinkled with natron water, or he would cause it to be “properly swept out “with charcoal mixed with a powdered plant. As a protection against fly-stings he might order the fat of the woodpecker, while fresh palm-wine would protect against gnat-stings. '' [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

A dried fish or a piece of natron, if laid upon a snake's hole, would prevent this dreaded invader of Egyptian houses from venturing out. Supposing however they wished to protect something in the house from the mice, a piece of cat's fat had to be laid upon it, for then the mice would not approach it, evidently they were supposed to imagine that the cat was at no great distance. It is more difficult to explain the antipathy which rats were supposed, according to Egyptian belief, to have to the excreta of gazelles. In order to keep these dreaded visitors away from the granaries, they were to take “excreta of gazelles, put it on the fire in the granary, then scour with water the walls and floor where traces of rats were to be seen; the consequence will be that no more grain will be eaten. "

“Against all kinds of witchcraft," the ancient Egyptian employed the following as a good preventive: “a great scarabaeus beetle; cut off his head and his wings, boil him, put him in oil, and lay him out. Then cook his head and his wings, put them in snake-fat, boil, and let the patient drink the mixture. " When the modern Egyptian wishes to cure hemorrhoids, he takes a black beetle, bakes it in oil, he then removes the wing-cases and the head, and softens them in oil over a gentle fire. It is the same recipe, except that the snake-fat is replaced by ordinary oil.

Ancient Egyptian Medicines With Applications for Modern Medicines

dried myrtle leaves

Ox liver — a good source of Vitamin A — was prescribed for night blindness. Patients with severe wounds were told to eat the mold from bread which later yielded penicillin. Castor plants were pressed into oil as a treatment for a variety of ailments. Pods from opium poppies were given to relieve pain. [Source: Lonnelle Aikman, National Geographic, September 1974]

The earliest known laxatives used in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, were made from ground senna pods and yellowish castor oil around 2500 B.C. Indigestion medicines were made from peppermint leaves and carbonates (antacids) and ethyl alcohol for pain relief.

The Egyptians used small doses of poisonous plants such as the deadly nightshade and thorn apple. A bas-relief shows Queen Nefertiti offering mandrake, a pain killer, to her ailing husband. The Egyptians also used onions to treat scurvy, aloe to relive upset stomachs and henbane as a sedative. Hard candies were used as cough drops. Other "recipes" seem a little impractical today. Parents, for example, were advised to give colicky babies "fly dirt that on the wall."

Peter Gwin wrote in National Geographic: “People forget that one of the oldest, most effective, scientifically proven drugs came from traditional medicine — aspirin. ” The ancient Egyptians used dried myrtle leaves to treat aches and pains, and Hippocrates, the fourth-century B.C. Greek physician, considered the father of Western medicine, prescribed an extract of willow bark for fevers. But it wasn’t until the 1800s that European scientists figured out that the active ingredient in both is salicylic acid and synthesized it. Today aspirin, at pennies a dose, is arguably the world’s most cost-effective drug. “It all started with people observing willow bark was effective and then using it to treat illness,” Yung-Chi Cheng, a pharmacology professor at Yale School of Medicine, says. “In this case, science followed the medicine, not the other way around. ” [Source: Peter Gwin, National Geographic, January 2019]

A number of ancient Egyptian superstitions spread into Europe. In a medical papyrus in the Berlin museum, the following artifice is described, by which one might be certain as to the prospect of a woman having children or not. An herb powdered and soaked in the milk of a woman who has borne a son. Let the woman eat it . . . if she vomits it, she will bear a child, if she has flatulence, she will not bear. " The same curious recipe is given by Hippocrates: Take figs or the plant Butyros and the milk of a woman who has borne a boy, and let the woman drink it. If she vomits, she will bear a child, if not, she will have no child."' The same old papyrus tells us a simple way of knowing whether a woman will bear a boy or a girl. It is only needful to steep some wheat and some spelt in some water she has passed; if the wheat sprouts, it will be a boy, if the spelt sprouts, it will be a girl. This recipe is not indeed to be found in Hippocrates, but by some means it came into Europe. In a 17th century book, Peter Boyer says: “Make two holes in the ground, throw barley into the one and wheat into the other, then pour into both the water of the pregnant woman, and cover them up again with earth. If the wheat shoots before the barley, it will be a boy, but if the barley comes up first, thou must expect a daughter. " There is also a little English book, called The experienced Midwife, in which this recipe appears in a somewhat modified form.”

Prescriptions in Ancient Egypt

In Ancient Egypt some medicines were supposed to act at once, others more slowly but at the same time more surely: "remedies" and "momentary remedies. " Many remedies again might only be used at certain seasons of the year. Thus amongst the prescriptions for the eyes, we find one that is only to be employed during the first and second months of the winter, whilst another is to be used during the third and fourth months, and of a third it is expressly stated that its use is allowed during all the three seasons of the year. In the same way the doctor had often to consider the age of his patients.

Ebers papyrus

In cases of retention of urine for instance, adults might take a mixture of stagnant water, dregs of beer, green dates, and other vegetable substances, the dose to be repeated four times; children however might not take this remedy, the latter were to have an old piece of writing soaked in oil placed as a compress round the body. A difference was also to be observed between child and child; we read in one place: “if it be a big child, it shall take the pills, if however it be still in its swaddliig clothes, the pills shall be dissolved in its nurse's milk. "'

In other cases, where these distinctions were not to be made, the doctor had not often much difficulty of choice, for the prescriptions were of various degrees of excellence. He might have tried many in his own practice, and written good by the side of them in his own prescription book; older colleagues might already have made similar remarks in the margin of others, such as “excellent, I have seen it, and also have often made it "; or again: “Behold this is a real remedy. It was found in an examination of the writings in the temple of Ucnnofre. " Other remedies may have owed their great reputation to the recovery of some famous person of antiquity," others again to their foreign origin. Thus there was an eye-salve, said to have been discovered by a “Semite of Byblos “— it was valued by the Egyptians as a Phoenician remedy.

There were of course many panaceas, which in this curious rhetoric were said to "drive out the fever of the gods, all death and pain from the limbs of man, so that he immediatcly becomes well." These wondrous remedies were not invented by human wisdom, but by the various gods for the sun-god Ra, who had to suffer from all kinds of diseases and pain before he withdrew to his heaven in spite of their supernatural origin. They are composed very much in the same way as the earthly prescriptions. One for instance consists of honcy. wax, and fourteen vegetable substances, to be mixed in equal parts; poultices were to be made of the mixture.

Cures in the Papyrus Ebers

Ancient Egyptians cures listed in the Papyrus Ebers: 1) Cure for Diarrhea: 1/8th cup figs and grapes, bread dough, pit corn, fresh Earth, onion, and elderberry. 2) Cure for Indigestion: Crush a hog's tooth and put it inside of four sugar cakes. Eat for four days. 3) Cure for Lesions of the Skin:After the scab has fallen off put on it: Scribe's excrement. Mix in fresh milk and apply as a poultice. [Source: Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com, Bob, Brier, “Ancient Egyptian Magic,” Quill Press: New York, 1981 +]

4) Cure for Burns: Create a mixture of milk of a woman who has borne a male child, gum, and, ram's hair. While administering this mixture say: Thy son Horus is burnt in the desert. Is there any water there? There is no water. I have water in my mouth and a Nile between my thighs. I have come to extinguish the fire. +\

5) Cure for Cataracts: Mix brain-of-tortoise with honey. Place on the eye and say: There is a shouting in the southern sky in darkness, There is an uproar in the northern sky, The Hall of Pillars falls into the waters. The crew of the sun god bent their oars so that the heads at his side fall into the water, Who leads hither what he finds? I lead forth what I find. I lead forth your heads. I lift up your necks. I fasten what has been cut from you in its place. I lead you forth to drive away the god of Fevers and all possible deadly arts. +\

Some common plants used in medicine by the Egyptians were: figs, grapes, bread dough, onions and elderberries. 1) Castor oil, figs and dates were used as laxatives. Tannic acid was valued by the Egyptians, because it helped heal burns. It was usually derived from acacia nuts. Coriander was considered to be a cooling stimulant with carminative and digestive properties. It was consumed in a tea for stomach illnesses. [Source: Page of Egyptian Medicine]

Magic Used for Healing in Ancient Egypt

piece of a magic wand

Dr Geraldine Pinch of Oxford University wrote for the BBC: “Magic was not so much an alternative to medical treatment as a complementary therapy. Surviving medical-magical papyri contain spells for the use of doctors, Sekhmet priests and scorpion-charmers. The spells were often targeted at the supernatural beings that were believed to be the ultimate cause of diseases. Knowing the names of these beings gave the magician power to act against them. [Source: Dr Geraldine Pinch, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

“Since demons were thought to be attracted by foul things, attempts were sometimes made to lure them out of the patient's body with dung; at other times a sweet substance such as honey was used, to repel them. Another technique was for the doctor to draw images of deities on the patient's skin. The patient then licked these off, to absorb their healing power. |::|

“Many spells included speeches, which the doctor or the patient recited in order to identify themselves with characters in Egyptian myth. The doctor may have proclaimed that he was Thoth, the god of magical knowledge who healed the wounded eye of the god Horus. Acting out the myth would ensure that the patient would be cured, like Horus. Collections of healing and protective spells were sometimes inscribed on statues and stone slabs (stelae) for public use. A statue of King Ramesses III (c.1184-1153 B.C.), set up in the desert, provided spells to banish snakes and cure snakebites. |::|

Some have inscriptions describing how Horus was poisoned by his enemies, and how Isis, his mother, pleaded for her son's life, until the sun god Ra sent Thoth to cure him. The story ends with the promise that anyone who is suffering will be healed, as Horus was healed. The power in these words and images could be accessed by pouring water over the cippus. The magic water was then drunk by the patient, or used to wash their wound. |::|

Herodotus on an Ancient Egyptian Cure for Blindness

In the 5th century B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus wrote: “In a story about the son of Ramses II, Herodotus wrote in Book 2 of “Histories”: “When he had been blind for ten years, an oracle from the city of Buto declared to him that the term of his punishment was drawing to an end, and that he would regain his sight by washing his eyes with the urine of a woman who had never had intercourse with any man but her own husband. Pheros tried his own wife first; and, as he remained blind, all women, one after another. [Source: Herodotus, “The Histories”, Egypt after the Persian Invasion, Book 2, English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920, Tufts]

When he at last recovered his sight, he took all the women whom he had tried, except the one who had made him see again, and gathered them into one town, the one which is now called “Red Clay”; having concentrated them together there, he burnt them and the town; but the woman by whose means he had recovered his sight, he married. Most worthy of mention among the many offerings which he dedicated in all the noteworthy temples for his deliverance from blindness are the two marvellous stone obelisks which he set up in the temple of the Sun. Each of these is made of a single block, and is over one hundred and sixty-six feet high and thirteen feet thick.”

Ancient Egyptian Medicinal Wines

potion flasks

The ancient Egyptians drank alcoholic beverages with medicinal herbs and other ingredients, according to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2009. The beverages, the oldest of which was an wine dated to 3150 B.C., were chemically analyzed to determine their ingredients, revealing the first direct chemical evidence of wines with organic medical additives. “The ancient Egyptians settled on adding herbs and other ingredients that had marked medicinal effects, probably just based on observational trial and error,” Patrick McGovern, an archaeochemist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum and lead author of the paper, told Discovery News. “Of course superstitions crept in too, such as when they would throw in a root because it resembled a certain body part, but we think there was some medical truth behind a lot of their wine additives.” [Source: Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News, April 14,2009]

Jennifer Viegas wrote in Discovery News, “He and colleagues Armen Mirzoian and Gretchen Hall chemically analyzed residues found inside a jar excavated from the tomb of one of Egypt’s first pharaohs, Scorpion I. They also conducted chemical tests on a later amphora, dating to the 4the to 6th centuries A.D., from Gebel Adda in southern Egypt. Both containers tested positive for wine with medicinal additives. The scientists determined Scorpion I’s drink consisted of grape wine to which a sliced fig had been added, probably to start and sustain the fermentation process, while also adding flavor and sweetness. Terebinth, a tree resin known now for having antioxidant properties, was also found within a yellowish flaky residue scraped from the jar, which was decorated with swirling red paint “tiger stripes.”

“While McGovern and his team aren’t yet certain what herbs were in the drink, since many plants share similar chemical components, they suspect mint, coriander, savory, senna and sage were likely candidates. The researchers are confident, however, that the second, more recent Egyptian wine contained pine resin and rosemary. A previous study determined that an early beer-like fermented emmer wheat barley beverage from Spain contained rosemary, along with mint and thyme. All of these ingredients and more were outlined in Egyptian medical papyri dating to 1850 B.C.

“McGovern said the resin and herbal ingredients probably served three primary functions. “They helped to preserve the wines, while also adding flavor and medical benefits,” he said, explaining that the last two frequently went together, since flavor was, and still is, often linked to health effects. “Bitter flavors in nature can signal danger, but they can also sometimes have powerful medicinal properties,” he added.

Ancient Nubian Antibiotic Beer

Ancient Nubians appear to have consumed a beer made from grains containing antibiotics. According to a study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. large amounts of tetracycline was found embedded in the bones of ancient Nubian mummies, who lived along the Nile in present-day Sudan,and their most likely source is the beer they drank consistently throughout their lifetimes, beginning early in childhood. “Given the amount of tetracycline there, they had to know what they were doing,” lead author of the study George Armelagos, a biological anthropologist at Emory University in Atlanta, said. “They may not have known what tetracycline was, but they certainly knew something was making them feel better.” [Source: Emily Sohn, abc.net.au, discovery news, September 2010 )=(]

Emily Sohn wrote: “Armelagos was part of a group of anthropologists that excavated the mummies in 1963. His original goal was to study osteoporosis in the Nubians, who lived between about 350 and 550 A.D. But while looking through a microscope at samples of the ancient bone under ultraviolet light, he saw what looked like tetracycline — an antibiotic that was not officially patented in modern times until 1950. At first, he assumed that some kind of contamination had occurred. “Imagine if you’re unwrapping a mummy, and all of a sudden, you see a pair of sunglasses on it,” says Armelagos. “Initially, we thought it was a product of modern technology.” )=(

Invocation to I-m-hetep the deity of medicine

“His team’s first report about the finding, bolstered by even more evidence and published in Science in 1980, was met with lots of scepticism. For the new study, he got help dissolving bone samples and extracting tetracycline from them, clearly showing that the antibiotic was deposited into and embedded within the bone, not a result of contamination from the environment. They were also able to trace the antibiotic to its source: grain that was contaminated with a type of mold-like bacteria called Streptomyces. Common in soil, Strep bacteria produce tetracycline antibiotics to kill off other, competing bacteria. )=( “Grains that are stored underground can easily become moldy with Streptomyces contamination, though these bacteria would only produce small amounts of tetracycline on their own when left to sit or baked into bread. Only when people fermented the grain would tetracycline production explode. Nubians both ate the fermented grains as gruel and used it to make beer...It appears that doses were high that consumption was consistent, and that drinking started early. Analyses of the bones showed that babies got some tetracycline through their mother’s milk. Then, between ages two and six, there was a big spike in antibiotics deposited in the bone, Armelagos said, suggesting that fermented grains were used as a weaning food. )=(

“Today, most beer is pasteurised to kill Strep and other bacteria, so there should be no antibiotics in the ale you order at a bar, says Dennis Vangerven, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. But Armelagos has challenged his students to home-brew beer like the Nubians did, including the addition of Strep bacteria. The resulting brew contains tetracycline, tastes sour but drinkable, and gives off a greenish hue. )=(

“There’s still a possibility that ancient antibiotic use was an accident that the Nubians never knew about, though Armelagos has also found tetracycline in the bones of another population that lived in Jordan. And VanGerven has found the antibiotic in a group that lived further south in Egypt during the same period. Finding tetracycline in these mummies, says VanGerven, is “surprising and unexpected. And at the very least, it gives us a very different time frame in which to understand the dynamic interaction between the bacterial world and the world of antibiotics.”“ )=(

Ancient Egyptian Medical Cannabis?

Cannabis was used by the ancient Egyptians to make rope. It may have also been consumed for pleasure or for medicine. Traces of THC (the active ingredient in cannabis) have been identified in an Egyptian mummy dated to 950 B.C.

Thomas Wrona wrote in Cannigma: In Egypt, medical cannabis use goes back for millennia. And while many different early cultures cultivated cannabis, the ancient Egyptians exemplified a truly holistic use of the plant. It’s even possible that cannabis — Egyptian hieroglyphs called it shemshemet — became popular before the great pyramids were built. [Source: Thomas Wrona, Cannigma]

Egypt’s historical use of shemshemet appears twofold. On one hand hemp may have been used for fiber and textile; on the other hand, the more psychoactive components of cannabis may have been used medicinally. Though many sources today appear authoritative in their claims that the ancient Egyptians used hemp for this and cannabis for that, a closer inspection of the evidence is needed.

While the exact timeline is less than crystal clear, cannabis was likely used in ancient Egypt as many as 5,000 years ago. Some speculate that depictions of the Egyptian Goddess of writing, Sheshat, are brimming with cannabis-inspired themes. In many paintings, she’s shown with a star-shaped leaf atop her head and a fibrous rope in her hand. Was Sheshat’s creative ability courtesy of some help from hemp?

Around 2,000 B.C., cannabis salves were used to treat eye sores and glaucoma. Today science has proven what the ancient Egyptians learned through centuries of experience: that cannabis is a potent anti-inflammatory which reduces intraocular pressure. Another Egyptologist, Lise Manniche, notes in her book An Ancient Egyptian Herbal that several texts dating back to the 18th century B.C. encouraged readers to “plant medicinal cannabis. ”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated August 2024