Researchers recently analyzed a human skull from the Duckworth Collection at the University of Cambridge, dating from 2686 to 2345 BC, in ancient Egypt.
This skull exhibited a large primary tumor as well as more than 30 small metastatic lesions. These lesions were surrounded by cut marks, likely made with a sharp metal instrument. This suggests that the
ancient Egyptians attempted surgery to treat this patient, a man in his thirties.
A new analysis of lesions on ancient Egyptian skulls suggests that humans tried to surgically treat cancer more than 1,000 years earlier than previously thought. The image shows the skull of a man who lived between 2686 and 2345 BC.
Credit: Tondini, Isidro, Camarós, 2024
Until now, the oldest known description of cancer came from around 1600 BC in the
Edwin Smith Papyrus, which described several breast tumors and stated that there was "no treatment" for these tumors. These new findings, published in the journal
Frontiers in Medicine, could thus push the boundaries of our understanding of the beginnings of modern medicine.
Close-up of the tumors found on the skull of the man in his thirties. Cut marks are visible on several of them.
Credit: Tondini, Isidro, Camarós, 2024 The team also examined the skull of a woman in her 50s, dated from 664 to 343 BC, also preserved at the University of Cambridge. Like the man, she had a large lesion suggesting cancer. However, she also had two other lesions caused by traumatic injuries, likely from an attack with a sharp weapon. These traumatic lesions were healed, indicating that ancient Egyptian medicine was capable of treating such injuries, but not cancer.
The findings suggest that cancer represented a "frontier" in the medical knowledge of the
ancient Egyptians: a disease they attempted to understand and treat, unsuccessfully. Without the clinical records of the patients, however, it is difficult to piece together the full history of these cancers.
The team now aims to trace further back in time to understand how humans have dealt with cancer over the millennia. According to Edgard Camarós Perez, if more than 4,000 years ago the ancient Egyptians tried to understand cancer at a surgical level, we believe this began even longer ago.