Medicine in ancient Egypt

The medicine of the ancient Egyptians is some of the oldest documented.

From the beginnings of the civilization in the late fourth millennium BC until the Persian invasion of 525 BC, Egyptian medical practice went largely unchanged but was highly advanced for its time, including simple non-invasive surgery, setting of bones, dentistry, and an extensive set of pharmacopoeia. Egyptian medical thought influenced later traditions, including the Greeks

If one had to be ill in ancient times, the best place to do so would probably have been Egypt. Not that an Egyptian's chances of survival would have been significantly better than those of his foreign contemporaries, but at least he had the satisfaction of being treated by physicians whose art was renowned all over the ancient world.

Herbal and mineral Medicine.

Ebers papyrus

Herbs played a major part in Egyptian medicine. The plant medicines mentioned in the Ebers papyrus for instance include opium, cannabis, myrrh, frankincense, fennel, cassia, senna, thyme, henna, juniper, aloe, linseed and castor oil - though some of the translations are less than certain. Cloves of garlic have been found in Egyptian burial sites, including the tomb of Tutankhamen and in the sacred underground temple of the bulls at Saqqara. Many herbs were steeped in wine, which was then drunk as an oral medicine.

Egyptians thought garlic and onions aided endurance, and consumed large quantities of them. Raw garlic was routinely given to asthmatics and to those suffering with bronchial-pulmonary complaints. Onions helped against problems of the digestive system.

Garlic was an important healing agent then just as it still is to the modern Egyptian and to most of the peoples in the Mediterranean area: Fresh cloves are peeled, mashed and macerated in a mixture of vinegar and water. This can be used to gargle and rinse the mouth, or taken internally to treat sore throats and toothache. Another way to take garlic both for prevention as well as treatment is to macerate several cloves of mashed garlic in olive oil. Applied as an external liniment or taken internally it is beneficial for bronchial and lung complaints including colds. A freshly peeled clove of raw garlic wrapped in muslin or cheesecloth and pinned to the undergarment is hoped to protect against infectious diseases such as colds and influenza.

Coriander, “C. Sativum” was considered to have cooling, stimulant, carminative and digestive properties. Both the seeds and the plant were used as a spice in cooking to prevent and eliminate flatulence; they were also taken as a tea for stomach and all kinds of urinary complaints including cystitis. Coriander leaves were commonly added fresh to spicy foods to moderate their irritating effects. It was one of the herbs offered to the gods by the king, and seeds were found in the tomb of Tutankhamen and in other ancient burial sites.

Cumin, “Cumin cyminum” is an umbelliferous herb indigenous to Egypt. The seeds were considered to be a stimulant and effective against flatulence. They were often used together with coriander for flavoring. Cumin powder mixed with some wheat flour as a binder and a little water was applied to relieve the pain of any aching or arthritic joints. Powdered cumin mixed with grease or lard was inserted as an anal suppository to disperse heat from the anus and stop itching.

Medical instruments relief on temple walls

Leaves from many plants, such as willow, sycamore, acacia  or the ym-tree, were used in poultices and the like . Tannic Acid derived from acacia seeds commonly helped for cooling the vessels and heal burns. Castor oil, and dates, were used as laxatives.

  Tape-worms, the snakes in the belly, were dealt with by an infusion of pomegranate root in water, which was strained and drunk. The alkaloids contained in it paralyzed the worms' nervous system, and they relinquished their hold. Ulcers were treated with yeast, as were stomach ailments.

Plants in medicine

Some of the medicines were made from plant materials imported from abroad. Mandrake, introduced from Canaan and grown locally since the New Kingdom, was thought to be an aphrodisiac and, mixed with alcohol, induced unconsciousness. Cedar oil (an antiseptic) originated in the Levant. The Persian henna was grown in Egypt since the Middle Kingdom, and - if identical with henu mentioned in the Ebers Papyrus - was used against hair loss. They treated catarrh with aloe, which came from eastern Africa. Frankincense, containing tetrahydrocannabinol (a painkiller) was used like the hashish. It was imported from Punt.

Minerals and animal products were used too. Honey and grease formed part of many wound treatments, mother's milk was occasionally given against viral diseases like the common cold, fresh meat laid on open wounds and sprains, and animal dung was thought to be effective at times.

Cosmetics

A jar of cosmetics at the Cairo Museum bears the legend: "Eye lotion to be dispersed, good for eyesight." An Egyptian papyrus from 1500 BCE discusses recipes for treating conjunctivitis and cornea, iris, and eyelid problems. Lead-based chemicals like carbonates and acetates were popular for their therapeutic properties.

  Malachite used as eyeliner also had therapeutic value. In a country where eye infections were endemic, the effects of its germicidal qualities were appreciated even if the reasons for its effectiveness were not understood.

It is worth noting that: Dr. Paul Ghalioungi wrote many books and articles on that subject. refer to "Dr. Ghalioungi and ancient medicine" on Goole search... 

“Fūl Medames”

Typical fūl medames “Vicia faba“ is served as breakfast by an Egyptian street vendor with  pickled vegetables, as well as fresh rocket (arugula) leaves on the side and plenty of Baladi (local) bread.

Fūl Street Vendor

Fūl medames (Arabic: فول مدمس‎‎, fūl midammis  IPA: [fuːl meˈdæmmes]; other spellings include fūl mudammas and foule mudammes), or simply fūl, is an Egyptian dish of cooked Fava beans served with vegetable oil, cumin, and optionally with chopped parsley, garlic, onion, lemon juice, and chili pepper. It is a staple food in Egypt. Fūl medames is also a common part of the cuisines of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Israel, Sudan, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia.

History

The Egyptian used Broad beans (Vicia faba L.), as a popular food in Egypt for a long time. The oldest known broad beans have been found in 5th dynasty tombs. They were mentioned in one of Ramses II's paeans on himself:

"Lower Egypt rowed to Upper Egypt for you, with barley, wheat, salt and beans without number." Stele of Ramses II, year 8-9

Breakfast is ready..

In medicine beans were used in remedies against constipation, in a remedy for a sick tongue or a treatment for male urinary complaints.

According to Herodotus, who travelled through Egypt in the Late Period, beans were ritually unclean and were not grown for human consumption:

"Beans moreover the Egyptians do not at all sow in their land, and those which they grow they neither eat raw nor boil for food; nay the priests do not endure even to look upon them, thinking this to be an unclean kind of pulse." Herodotus, Histories II

Preparing fūl meal

Diodorus thought that the Egyptians were forbidden to eat beans and chick peas in order to teach them the value of abstention. But legumes were found as offerings in tombs. During the times of Ramses III the priests of Thebes and Memphis received donations of beans. Lupins, lentils, chick peas and peas (since the Middle Kingdom) were also consumed. Lentils, easily kept dry, were used in trading. According to the story of Wenamen's journey 21 measures of lentils were part of the payment the Egyptian ambassador gave to the ruler of Byblos for a shipload of timber.

More evidence of the use of fūl in the middle east was in a cache of 2,600 dried wild beans unearthed at a late Neolithic site on the outskirts of Nazareth.

Fūl

The qidra

  

The word medames was originally “Coptic”, meaning "buried", and it’s use here might mean that the beans are buried in the pot, but the most plausible explanation is that the pot was buried in the smouldering ashes for long hours. This cooking method is mentioned in the Talmud Yerushalmi, indicating that the method was used in Middle Eastern countries at least since the fourth century.

Qidra

In the Middle Ages, the making of fūl in Cairo was monopolized by the people living around the Princess Baths, a public bath in a tiny compound near today's public fountain of Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha, a block north of the two elegant minarets of the Mosque of Sultan Mu’ayyad Shaykh above the eleventh-century Bab Zuwaylah gate. During the day, bath-attendants stoked the fires heating the qidras, which are huge pots of bath water. Wood was scarce, so garbage was used as fuel and eventually a dump grew around the baths. When the baths closed at the end of the day, the red embers of the fires continued to burn. To take advantage of these precious fires, huge "qidras" (copper containers) were filled with Fava beans, and these cauldrons were kept simmering all night, and eventually all day too, in order to provide breakfast for Cairo's population. Cook shops throughout Cairo would send their minions to the Princess Baths to buy their wholesale fūl.

Fūl plant

Although there are countless ways of embellishing fūl, the basic recipe remains the same. Once the fūl is cooked, it is salted and eaten plain or accompanied by olive oil, corn oil, butter, clarified butter, buffalo milk, basturma, fried or boiled eggs, tomato sauce, garlic sauce, tahini, fresh lemon juice, chili peppers, or other ingredients including Cumin.

Fūl is prepared from the small, round bean known in Egypt as fūl ḥammām ("bath beans"). Other kinds of Fava beans used by Egyptian cooks are fūl rūmī ("Roman"), large kidney-shaped Fava beans, and fūl baladī (local beans, which are of middling size).

Fresh ful pods

Fūl akhḍar ("green fūl") are the fresh Fava beans in their pods eaten mostly in spring during “Sham El Nassim”. Grains of green fūl is also cooked in a tomato sauce as a vegetable dish.

sprout beans

Fūl nābit (sprout beans) are dried Fava bean soaked in water until they sprouts then they are boiled, it is normally eaten as a soup.

Bisara

The fūl madshūsh ("crushed fūl") are dried crushed Fava beans, they normally are used to make the famous Falafel (Tamieh) patties that are basically made from Fūl madshush,  some spices and then deep fried. Another dish is “Besara” a variant of cracked Fūl and green coriander, leaks and many more green spices presented as  puree garnished with fried onions.

Falafel patties

Each family, group, village or country has it own variation of how to prepare Fūl, for example the fūl Iskandarani (From Alexandria) ispresented with parsley and cotton oil, Fūl Domiati (From Damietta) with eggs and sunflower oil etc...

Typical Fūl meal

Amazingly enough Fūl will blend with almost any type of culinary ingredient to suite different tastes. Some recipes will pass it through a strainer to get rid of the skin and present it like a puree again garnished with oil and lemon.

Fūl medames was exported from Egypt to other parts of the Arabic Speaking World, as well as other parts of Africa and Asia, but particularly to Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Yemen, Sudan and Libya.

Fūl is a popular breakfast dish in Syria, especially Aleppo. The Fava beans are left simmering in large copper jars throughout the night, to be served the next morning, the beans swim in tahini and olive oil, completed with a hint of red pepper paste (made from Aleppo pepper) over the top.

Fūl is a very common dish in Armenia, however unlike most Middle Eastern countries, it is modified with more exclusive and rare spices and not to forget "Bastourma".

In Somalia, fūl is eaten with a pancake-like bread called laxoox (canjeero/injera). It is also part of Ethiopian cuisine, where it is one of the only dishes not served with Ethiopia's traditional injera (flatbread). Instead, fūl is served with standard flour bread, often providing a communal kitchen for patrons seeking to bake such types of breads. The beans are topped, or mixed with, a combination of oil and Berber spices.

In Malta, fūl bil-toome (beans with garlic) is usually associated with fasting during Lent and Good Friday. The beans are cooked in oil with garlic and fresh or dried mint, and then dressed with olive oil or vinegar before serving.

Egyptians Inventions

  

Things that Egyptians Were the First to Create

Egypt has a glorious past, its people descended from a civilization that was once the most intellectually and technologically advanced in the world. Because we all sometimes need a reminder, here’s a quick round up of successful inventions that were created by Egyptians before any other civilization.

Eye makeup (eye shadow and eye liner) – 4000 BC

Egyptians were among the first to popularize the use of eye makeup. 

Some of the earliest makeup palettes date back to circa 5000 BCE, the most common colours being green (made out of malachite, a green carbonate of copper) 

and black (made out of galena, an ore of lead).

System of writing (pictographs) – 3200 BCE

Composed of around 500 symbols, Egyptian hieroglyphics date back to 3200 BCE and represented the first writing system based on illustrated representations of words or sounds.

With the exception of Mesopotamian cuneiform, which emerged independently around 3200 BCE, the innovation of writing in Egypt predated other civilizations’ advancement by thousands of years. The next civilization to invent writing would be the Chinese in 1200 BCE.

Papyrus paper – 3000 BCE

Made from the papyrus plant indigenous to the banks of the Nile River in Egypt, ancient Egyptians were the first among all civilizations to use these thin, paper-like stationary for writing. By 1000 BCE, papyrus papers were being exported out of Egypt for use all over West Asia, as they were more convenient than clay tablets.

365-day calendar – 4000 BCE

Ancient Egyptians originally used a calendar year of 360 days, split into 12 months of 30 days each. It wasn’t until around 4000 BCE that they added extra five days to keep up with the solar calendar, for a total of 365 days. In 238 BCE, Egyptians even invented the leap year. The 365-day calendar, including the leap year, is still in use in most parts of the world today.

Ox-drawn plow – 2500 BCE

The banks of the Nile were once fertile agricultural sites, where ancient Egyptians would grow wheat and a variety of vegetables. The ox-drawn plow made irrigation much easier and farming much more lucrative.

Breath mints

Sadly, ancient Egyptians did not have the best teeth in the ancient world (likely due to the sand residue left in food products by rock grinders), as evidenced by the presence of rotting teeth and terrible tooth abscesses in the mouths of mummies. To cover the smell, Egyptians became the first civilization to invent breath mints, which were originally pellets made out of cinnamon, myrrh, frankincense and honey.

Shaving and haircuts (the clean-cut look)

In ancient Egypt, hair removal for both men and women was an established custom in society. Body hair was associated with barbarianism and un-cleanliness, whereas being clean and well groomed was a sign of sophistication. When the Romans invaded, they looked down on the practice as they believed that body hair was a sign of masculinity, and a man without body hair must be somehow disabled.

The pin-tumbler door lock – 4,000 BCE

A hollowed-out bolt in the door is connected to pins that can be manipulated with the insertion of a key. These locks were much more advanced than those invented years later in Rome, which were built into the door and much easier to pick.

Toothbrushes and toothpaste – 5000 BCE

Ancient Egyptians may have had bad teeth due to the rock debris in their food, but at least they tried to take care of themselves. 

They were the first to have used toothbrushes and toothpaste (made from eggshells and ox hooves) to clean their teeth as a regular ritual.

Reed pens and black ink – 3200 BCE

Not only were ancient Egyptians the first to invent papyrus paper and writing, they were also the first to invent black ink and popularize the use of reed pens. The ink was made from water, soot and vegetables gums.

Wigs

Both men and women as either a fashion statement or to hide baldness used wigs widely in ancient Egypt. They were originally made from human hair and later from date palm fibers.

  

High heels – 3500 BCE 

The first images depicting the use of high heels in Egypt date back to 3500 BCE. Nobility, both male and female, typically wore high heels while common people would walk barefoot. The only exceptions were butchers, who’d wear high heels in order to walk over pools of blood from animal carcasses.

Originally Written by Laura Logan 

Bottarga - Caviar

Closely related names are used for the delicacy in various languages: batarekh , butarkhah , batrakh (Arabic) or botarga (Occitan, Spanish, and Catalan). The name bottarga is used in English and Italian. In other languages it is called boutargue (French), butarga (Portuguese), and butàriga (Sardinian), abudaraho (Turkish), avgotaraho (Greek αυγοτάραχο) 
Added note received after publication from a Greek friend: 
"Αυγο" means: Egg !!  and Αυγοτάραχο means: Egg of the Fish !!.

Bottarga بطارخ

Bottarga Eaten as a Hors d'oeuvre, it is made from Fish roe.

Bottarga is the Italian name for a delicacy of salted, cured fish roe, typically of the grey mullet frequently found near coastlines throughout the world, that often is featured in Mediterranean cuisine and consumed in many other regions of the world. The food bears many different names and is prepared in several different ways.

The product is similar to the softer cured mullet roe, karasumi from Japan and East Asia. Sometimes the delicacy is prepared from tuna.

Etymology

The English name, bottarga, was borrowed from Italian. The Italian form is thought to have been introduced from the Arabic buṭarḫah بطارخة (plural buṭariḫ بطارخ), but ultimately derives from Byzantine Greek ᾠοτάριχον (oiotárikhon)

The Italian form can be dated to ca. 1500, since the Greek form transliterated into Latin as ova tarycha occurs in Bartolomeo Platina's De Honesta Voluptate (ca. 1474), the earliest printed cookbook, and an Italian manuscript dating shortly afterward that "closely parallels" this cookbook attests to botarghe in the corresponding passage.

The first mention of the Greek form (oiotárikhon) occurs in the writings of Simeon Seth in the eleventh century, who denounced the food as something to be "avoided totally", although a similar phrase may have been in use since antiquity in the same denotation. Although depicted in ancient Egypt, it has no known name.

Preparation

Bottarga is made chiefly from the roe pouch of grey mullet. Sometimes it is prepared from Atlantic bluefin tuna (bottarga di tonno) or swordfish. It is massaged by hand to eliminate air pockets, then dried and cured in sea salt for a few weeks. The result is a hard, dry slab that sometimes is coated in beeswax for preservation purposes.

Not all Bottarga is coated in beeswax as some producers simply keep the natural casing of the roe intact, which contains the eggs securely once dried and salted. The curing time may vary depending on producer and the desired texture as well as the preference of the consumers, which varies by country.

Sometimes called the caviar of the south, bottarga usually is sliced thinly or grated when it is served. The delicacy currently is served in many regions, including the following.

Croatia

In Croatia, the delicacy is known as butarga or butarda. It usually is fried before serving.

 

France

In the French region, Provence, it is named Poutargue and produced in the city of Martigues It also may be called boutargue in France.

Greece

In Greece, avgotaraho is produced primarily from the flathead mullet caught in Greek lagoons. The whole mature ovaries are removed from the fish, washed with water, salted with natural sea salt, dried under the sun, and sealed in melted beeswax.

Italy

In Italy, it is best known in Sicilian and Sardinian cuisine as bottarga; its culinary properties may be compared to those of dry anchovies, although it is much more expensive. Often, it is served with olive oil or lemon juice as an appetizer accompanied by bread or crostini. It also is used in pasta dishes.

Bottarga is categorized as a Traditional food product (prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale). It varies by region, in particular, is produced in Sardinia from flathead mullet and in Sicily from Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Lebanon

In Lebanon it is served sliced, where each slice is covered with a piece of raw garlic and the whole is immersed in olive oil, then eaten with flat bread.

Turkey

In Turkey, bottarga is made from grey mullet roe. It is listed in the Ark of Taste. It is produced in Dalyan, on the southwestern coast of Turkey, from the mature fish migrating from Lake Köyceğiz.

Egypt

In Egypt it is produces from mullet roe, mostly from the Borolos lakes, the pouch is salted, dried and consumed in sin slices with lemon over buttered flat bread.

It is interesting to note that Bottarga is seen on Ancient Egyptian murals from the old pharaohs world.