Even before my "pharmacy career" and long before Egyptology, I was enrolled in dentistry for a few semesters. Blessed with insensitive teeth and knowing toothache only from hearsay, I gave up on this project when I almost fell off my feet while watching a wisdom tooth extraction (the dentist was jerking his "victim's" tooth quite violently with an ugly tool...). At that time I had no idea that toothache has always plagued mankind and that (as always) our ancient Egyptian friends tried to cure their patients of this plague.
In fact, palaeopathological examinations reveal a rather devastating picture as far as the dental health of the Ancient Egyptians is concerned! Most frequently, there were severe signs of wear, some of which were so serious that the "pulp" (the "soft" part where the nerves also run) was exposed, which must have led to severe pain. What could have been the reason for this widespread disease?
The food of the Egyptians, especially of the farmers, consisted primarily of grain and its further processing stages. Statues and paintings have come down to us from tombs that show the process of harvesting grain, storing it and grinding it. The grinding was done on a stone and the grain was then ground by another stone until flour was obtained.
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna
"Servant grinding grain"
ca. 2200-2191 BCE
This flour, however, not only contained the ground grain, but also the abrasion of the stone that was used for grinding! During baking, this stone abrasion got into the bread and troubled the teeth when chewing. Another sandy problem is the proximity of Egypt's settlements to the desert: drifting sand still creeps through every crack of Egyptian dwellings and has also always found its way into stored food. Since sand is harder than tooth enamel, the constant chewing of sand grains leads to enormous abrasion and the constant loss of tooth substance.
Besides this very specific disease, however, more "ordinary" abscesses of the oral cavity also occurred, and also (though rather rarely) caries. Interestingly, the latter was probably more a problem of the upper classes, who had easier access to sugary sweet foods.
Toothbrushes or dental care products have unfortunately not been handed down to us. Priestly cleansing rituals give an indication that rinsing the mouth with natron was practised, but certainly only by those who had access to it (i.e. the upper class). So good dental prophylaxis was by no means the standard.
So what options were left to the dentists? The Papyrus Ebers at least gives some recipes here that may well have been helpful:
"Beginning of the remedies for strengthening a tooth: flour of the seed of emmer 1 part, ochre 1 part, honey 1 part; be made into a mass, stuff the tooth with it."
Ochre and honey have slightly bacteria-killing properties, which is why this mass should certainly have served well as a temporary tooth filling.
Another remedy is said to have eliminated ulcers, i.e. inflammatory abscesses on the teeth:
"Milk of cattle 1 part, fresh dates 1 part, legume (which one is unfortunately unknown) 1 part. Exposed to dew at night, moved around chewing in the mouth, spat out."
Here the whole thing is less obvious. However, the instruction "expose to dew at night" reminds me of an episode told about Nostradamus: He is said to have cured the plague in some patients in Provence in the 16th century by using rose petals collected in the morning dew as medicine. It was discovered that the dew probably caused mould to grow on the leaves, which in turn released antibiotic substances, just as Alexander Fleming later obtained penicillin from mould. From this point of view, the ancient Egyptian remedy might actually have contributed to eliminating inflammation of teeth.
Finally, of course, I still owe an explanation for the cover picture:
The structure comes from a necropolis near al-Qatta, near Cairo, from the time around 2500 BCE. Obviously, it is three human teeth held together with a golden wire. Of course, there was a lot of excitement, could this not be the first kind of a dental bridge used to replace a lost tooth? Unfortunately, the question is not so easy to answer. Probably the construction was too unstable to actually be used for eating. However, a purely aesthetic replacement during one's lifetime would certainly be conceivable; in any case, this tooth replacement was made for the afterlife, so that eating was at least possible there again without any problems.
Cover Picture
from: R.J. Forshaw, The Practice of Dentistry in Ancient Egypt. Stored at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
Literature
- R.J. Forshaw, Dental Health and Disease in Ancient Egypt, in: British Dental Journal 206 (8) 2009, 421-424.
- R.J. Forshaw, The Practice of Dentistry in Ancient Egypt, in: British Dental Journal 206 (9) 2009, 481-486.
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