Catalogue of ancient Egyptian drugs revealed in 3500-year-old papyrus

Experts identified a number of drugs used by ancient Egyptians through careful and long analysis of a 3500-year-old papyrus. Among the medicine are bull fat, bats blood, and lizard poop.

The papyrus (by Mikkel Andreas Beck)

It took 6 months for egyptologists to decipher the papyrus, which consists of seven small fragments, housed at the University of Copenhagen for 80 years. It contained a medical record with a recipe on one side and gynaecological text on the other, connected with birth prognoses on whether someone is having a boy or a girl. The recipe is for a treatment against trichiasis – ingrown eyelashes. The recipe involved bull fat, bat blood, donkey blood, what looks like the heart of a lizard, a little pulverised pottery and a dash of honey

(after Science Nordic & Mikkel Andreas Beck)

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