This is how Getafix speaks when, back in the Gaulish homeland, he recounts his experiences with Asterix in Egypt with Cleopatra (she is said to have had such a delightful nose...).
We are now heading towards autumn and soon we will be sitting on the sofa again with runny noses, handkerchiefs spread around us and grumbling about this organ that torments us. For the Egyptians, the common cold apparently also had relevance; after all, there is a prescription for it, and that is date juice, which is put into the nose. An early form of nasal drops, then, and certainly with a very pleasant taste when the drops run down the throat again....
We encounter the nose quite frequently in all kinds of Egyptian texts, not because the Egyptians had a cold particularly often, but because for them the nose was inseparably linked with something else entirely: the "breath of life".
According to ancient Egyptian beliefs, air enters the body through the nose and gives life by being distributed to the heart, lungs and abdomen. This and similar wordings on the subject of the nose can be found very regularly:
"May your nose inhale air to let your throat breathe".
"She (a deity) gives you air to your nose so that you live."
Consequently, a blocked nose is one of the afflictions one has to deal with in old age:
"Old age has set in [...] The nose is blocked, it cannot breathe, for it is difficult to get up and sit down."
In texts praising kings for their benevolence, it says: "All noses are cool when he is far from anger."
Why cool noses are good (and not just for dogs) may not be immediately obvious; but in the sometimes stifling summer heat of Egypt, a cool breeze that makes breathing easier is certainly a blessing. So if the king is happy, so are his subjects - or at least their noses.
It also fits into this context that good smells must have been something truly divine for the Egyptians. In numerous temples there are scenes in which incense is offered to the gods, combined with these words from the Edfu temple, among others:
"Myrrh of a first-class kind is on the flame for your Ka; its fragrance has reached heaven. May your body rejoice at this incense. May your heart be glad, O Lord of Gods, and your nose be filled with fragrance."
The medical texts, apart from the date nose drops, give little "solid evidence" of nasal diseases. One case, however, is actually worth mentioning, and that is case 11 from the Papyrus Smith, a surgical treatise on trauma. It is a kind of textbook on the diagnosis of injuries, combined with recommendations for therapy options.
So in case 11, we learn how Egyptian doctors should deal with a broken nose.
"If you treat a man for a fracture in the pillar of his nose: his nose is flattened, his face is flattened out, he has bled from both his nostrils. It is an ailment I will handle. You shall wipe his nose with two plugs of cloth, then moisten two cloth swabs with oil and place them inside his two nostrils. You have to put him on his bed. You have to set for him stiff rolls of cloth so that his nose is restricted from moving. Treat him every day with oil and honey, so that he may be better."
To cut a long story short: Nasal bone fractures are hardly treated differently even today! The nose is tamponaded, the tamponade is fixed so that the nose is stabilised - and the patient is prescribed a horizontal position.
In the case of the patient below and his "nose fracture", however, these measures are unlikely to have had any effect...
Images
"Asterix and Cleopatra" © 1963-2013 Dargaud / Les Editions Albert-René, Goscinny-Uderzo / Egmont
Comentarios