Archaeologists Discover Intricately Decorated Tomb Belonging to a Doctor Who Treated Egyptian Pharaohs 4,100 Years Ago

Archaeologists have excavated an intricately carved and painted tomb in northern Egypt, and they think the 4,100-year-old burial chamber belonged to a prominent, multi-talented royal doctor: a physician who served ancient Egyptian kings as an expert in medicinal plants, dentistry and venomous bites.

A team of French and Swiss researchers discovered the tomb in Saqqara, the necropolis of the ancient capital city of Memphis, according to a statement from Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

“This incredible find adds to Saqqara’s rich legacy as one of Egypt’s most significant archaeological sites,” writes the ministry. “The tomb is adorned with stunning carvings and vibrant artwork, including a beautifully painted false door and scenes of funerary offerings.”

Inside the tomb, researchers found a stone sarcophagus bearing the name “Tetinebefou” in hieroglyphics. The inscriptions also indicate that he was the chief palace physician, priest, chief dentist, director of medicinal plants and conjurer of the goddess Serket—an Egyptian deity known for curing venomous snake and scorpion bites.

The doctor may have served under Pepi II, a pharaoh of ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom around the 23rd century B.C.E. He was crowned as a child and retained the throne for 60 to 90 years. When he died, he too was buried in Saqqara, entombed in a pyramid.

The Saqqara necropolis has been extensively looted over the millennia, according to a translated blog post from the researchers. They found only small fragments of funerary materials, but the painted walls alone made the discovery “exceptional.” As Live Science’s Owen Jarus reports, the paintings actually depict objects that the doctor might have used, such as jars and vases.

The doctor’s title of “conjurer of the goddess Serket” means he was “a specialist in poisonous bites,” as research team leader Philippe Collombert, an Egyptologist at the University of Geneva, tells Live Science. The other titles on the sarcophagus are quite rare: “Director of medicinal plants” has only been found on one other ancient Egyptian artifact, and “chief dentist” is also very unusual, Collombert says.

“Evidence for ancient Egyptian ‘dentists’ is exceedingly scarce,” as Roger Forshaw, an Egyptologist at the University of Manchester who wasn’t involved in the research, tells Live Science.

The ancient Egyptians are known for their advances in medical science, and they possessed extensive knowledge of human anatomy. Thousands of years ago, they were treating brain cancer via surgery, diagnosing the condition now known as diabetes and building prosthetics.

“We are talking about a society that at the time had the most advanced medicine that ever existed,” as Edgard Camarós, a paleopathologist at Spain’s University of Santiago de Compostela, told History.com’s Jesse Greenspan last year.

Many ancient Egyptian doctors were specialists, focusing on a single body part or sickness, according to the fifth-century B.C.E. Greek historian Herodotus. He wrote, “All the country is full of physicians, some of the eye, some of the teeth, some of what pertains to the belly and some of the hidden diseases.”

As such, Tetinebefou’s numerous and rare titles indicate that he held high status during the reign of Pepi. As Collombert tells Live Science, “He was certainly the main physician at the royal court, so he would have treated the pharaoh himself.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.