How to cure a migraine

and other ailments in old Egypt

I was reading an article from the Journal of Coptic Studies about Coptic medicine practices.  Apparently one of the first Coptic kings, Manaqiusch ibn Aschmun, of whom nothing is now known, ordered the construction of the first Egyptian hospitals.  Also, during this early period in history, ca. 1300 AD, women were among the practicing doctors of Egypt, as mentioned in early Coptic medical documents: TCAEIN EEI EHOUN (tsaein eei ehoun) 'the (female) doctor (who) entered' (the T- prefix is the feminine definite article, thus indicating a female).  The Coptic word for doctor, CAEIN1, goes back to Ancient Egyptian (AE) swnw (sunu); the word for medication, prescription or treatment, PAHRE (pahre), goes back to AE phrt (pahret?).2 


Following are a couple of the more interesting treatments (some of the documents appear incomplete or in fragments):

For migraine: KOPROC N[EROMPE, LIBANOC, ARCUNIKON ... ;NOOU HI HYMJ (kopros ncherompe livanos arsynikon ... thno'ou hi heimdj xro) 'pigeon dung, incense, arsenic... rub  with vinegar and turn.'

For a cold: OUACCWWD ETBE PEHREUMA MN PMAUE ETHORS ECWTM JI NAK ...  NEUVORBIOU, ;NOOU HI NEH ME ] EHRAI HN SENTF SAULO EUO NHREUMA NCECWTM NKECOP (ouassood etve pehreuma mn pmaue ethorsh esotm dji nak ... neuforviou thno'ou hi neh me ti ehrai hn shentf shaulo euo nhreuma nsesotm nkesop) 'A cure for a cold and hard-of-hearingness: Take ... Euphorbium (?), rub it with olive oil.  Give it in the nostril.  The patient will cease being stuffed up and will again be able to hear.'

Well, it's up to you if you want to try these treatments at home!

From:

Kolta, Kamal.  2004.  Krankheit und Therapiemethoden bei den Kopten.  In Journal of Coptic Studies 6, 149-160.

(Translation from the original German is mine.)

 

1 Could this Egyptian word be the ultimate origin of the -cine and -cian suffixes of English medi-cine, physi-cian?

2 The vowel sounds of AE are often still a mystery, since the AE hieroglyphic writing did not indicate vowel sounds, only consonant sounds, as in the scripts of other Semitic languages.  Coptic, written in a version of the Greek alphabet, can often help supply the unknown vowel sounds, however.

 

 

Archaeology, terminology, and racism

I’ve been reading another interesting book titled, Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians by Timothy Pauketat (2004). There is one section that raises some key points regarding the terminology we employ for describing the archaeology of ancient Native North American civilizations, and particularly that of Cahokia.






Following are a few quotes from this book:

… the legacy of this nineteenth-century "Moundbuilder Myth" still lurks in the dark corners of archaeology, shrouded in some of the well-meaning interpretive schemes used by archaeologists and laypersons alike (see Kehoe 1998; Patterson 1995). In plain words, that legacy is racist. But it lives wherever archaeologists [or laypeople] understate the cultural achievements or de-emphasize the historical importance of First Nations peoples. It is hidden in words. For instance, Cahokia has been called a "mound center," a "town and mound" complex, or the "ceremonial center" of a "chiefdom." Few North American archaeologists call it a city. Fewer still would think of it as a kingdom or a state. Even the term "pyramid" is thought too immodest by many eastern North American archaeologists. They prefer to call these four-sided and flat-topped equivalents of stone pyramids in Mexico … mounds.

However, if Cahokia, Cahokians, and Cahokia’s mounds had been in ancient Mesopotamia, China, or Africa, archaeologists might not hesitate to identify [Cahokian] pyramids in a city at the center of an early state….

…many North American archaeologists are "downsizers" (Yoffee et al. 1999:267). We have inherited the conservative and subtly racist terminology of the nineteenth century (Kehoe 1998).

…cultural biases have crept into our interpretations of New World people, and the Moundbuilder Myth lives.

May I also proffer that some of this "subtly racist" terminology in regards to the New World, and particularly to the ancient civilizations of North America, arises from our own sense of guilt? I mean, the idea that our government attempted and performed veritable genocide on peoples who may have built Old World-type city-states does not sit well with most Euro-Americans today. Thus, "downsizing" their accomplishments (such as making a "pyramid" into a mere "mound" reminiscent of something a gopher can make) serves to somewhat assuage said guilt. Amazing how a manipulation of terminology can so subtly affect all aspects of society, from government right down to science. Linguistics can indeed turn ugly!

Citation references:

Kehoe, Alice B. 1998 The Land of Prehistory: A Critical History of American Archaeology. Routledge, London.

Patterson, Thomas C. 1995 Toward A Social History of Archaeology in the United States. Harcourt Brace and Company, Orlando, Florida.

Yoffee, Norman, Suzanne K. Fish, and George R. Milner 1999 Communidades, Ritualities, Chiefdoms: Social Evolution in the American Southwest and Southeast. In Great Towns and Regional Polities in the Prehistoric American Southwest and Southeast, edited by J.E. Neitzel, pp. 261-71. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

Is 1491 a more accurate version of American history prior to the arrival of Columbus?

If any of you who are interested in American history before the cataclysmic arrival of Columbus in 1492 hasn’t already done so, I’d highly suggest reading 1491 by Charles Mann. It is a thought-provoking book based on up-to-date anthropological and archeological evidence of what the Americas really looked like before the European arrival and the mass assault on the indigenous peoples who welcomed him began.

In what little free time I have these days, I’ve been reading a couple of articles* about Poverty Point**, an archeological site in northeastern Louisiana. I’d heard of Cahokia in western Illinois (in what’s now East St. Louis) and Aztalan in Wisconsin, but I hadn’t heard of this massive site in Louisiana until now.

The site was first reported in 1873 by archeologist Samuel Lockett. But its unusual nature didn’t become evident until excavations were conducted by the American Museum of Natural History in the 1950s. An examination of an aerial photograph revealed that Poverty Point was an earthen enclosure built on such a huge scale that it couldn’t be recognized from the ground.

Carbon dating has placed the age of the main site at about 1700 BC. Villages apparently interconnected by waterways branching off the Mississippi River are thought to have contained permanent residences and these sites often contained artificial earthen mounds and C-shaped embankments which likely contained the houses of the residents. (The only house pattern so far discovered is small and circular, about 13-15 feet or 4-4.6 m in diameter.) Mounds were often dome-shaped, but at least two mounds at the main Poverty Point site were in the shape of flying birds. Excavations have not determined how the mounds were used.

The geometric layout of Poverty Point suggests that the site was built according to a master plan that indicates the home of a large resident population and a magnet for visitors and traders. In addition to the concentric C-shaped residential embankments, Poverty Point contains a large plaza, a flat open area of about 37 acres. On one side of the plaza some unusually large and deep pits were discovered that are thought to have contained huge posts as calendar markers to mark equinoxes and solstices.

There are several mounds, the largest of which represents a flying bird and stands 70 feet (21 m) high. While the majority of Poverty Point’s inhabitants lived on the embankments in the central enclosure, there’s evidence that people also lived and worked outside the enclosure perhaps as much as up to 25 miles distant.

Among the artifacts so far discovered at the site are simple pottery, stone vessels, and chipped stone and polished stone tools. Polished stone ornaments such as beads, pendants, and animal figurines are also characteristic. Among the more interesting of the artifacts are balls made from silt fashioned in dozens of different styles that were used for cooking. Archeologists have tried cooking in earth ovens made like those at Poverty Point. Using different shaped balls or objects was apparently the ancient cook’s way of regulating cooking temperature, just like setting time and power level on a modern microwave oven. These types of implements appeared to have been made up until about 1350 BC.

Obviously, reading about the Poverty Point site and its similarities to Cahokia and Aztalan (not to mention sites in Mesoamerica) made me realize that perhaps Mann’s view of the ancient Americas as consisting of large settlements, even metropolises, containing huge ceremonial centers and connected by a large network of terrestrial and aquatic trade routes is closer to the real scenario than that which we’re normally taught in high school and even college textbooks of the noble savage.

Gone are the days of seeing Native America as a simple, largely disconnected hodgepodge of hunter-gatherer temporary villages!

* Info from Gibson, J. (1996) Poverty Point, A Terminal Archaic Culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley, 2nd edition by the (Louisiana) Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism.

** Named for a plantation that once occupied the site.

For yet more info on Poverty Point, see the Moundbuilders/Ancient Southwest link on the sidebar.

Castration Frustration

OK, so I guess this is what happens when one really doesn't have anything specific in mind for a post but one wants to keep up the blog. Well, this is related to anthropology, after all, which in turn is related to linguistics. So....

I was reading a post on Archaeologica (see link at right) about the Italian exhumation of a popular opera castrato. Of course curiosity got the best of me and I had to read up more on castrati and castratism. I had no idea there was such a market for this back into the 1500s, and the practice continued in Italy until the 1800s.

Here is a Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castrato

I was particularly amused, and also saddened somehow, both at the same time, when I read this line from the Wikipedia article:

Castration was by no means a guarantee of a promising career. During the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, only approximately 1% of fully or partially castrated boys developed into successful singers.

That must have really sucked! I mean to be neutered for what turned out to be no good reason...that must have been frustrating!

All in the name of entertainment.