Egyptian scribes suffered work-related injuries, study says
From a bad back to tired eyes, office work can take its toll on the body.
But it seems such dangers are nothing new: Researchers have found that Egyptian scribes suffered damage to their hips, jaws and thumbs as a result of their efforts.
Experts studying the remains of scribes who lived between 2700 and 2180 B.C. were buried in the necropolis of Abusir, Egypt, say that compared to men who did other jobs, the custodians showed signs of degenerative joint changes.
“Our study should answer the question of which occupational risk factors were associated with the ‘profession’ of writing in ancient Egypt,” said Petra Brukner Havelková, the first author of the study, at the National Museum in Prague. She added that the work could also help identify scribes among skeletons of individuals whose titles or occupations were not known.
In the news Scientific reportstold the team how they analyzed the remains of 69 adult men from Abusir from the third millennium BC, of whom 30 were known to be writers.
Because only 1% of the population could read and write, such men had a high social status and performed crucial administrative work. Veronika Dulíková, a co-author of the study from Charles University in Prague, said it was known that writers started working as teenagers in professional careers that could last decades.
However, it seems the job has taken its toll. Although the team found small differences in the prevalence of certain skeletal features between writers and non-writers, suggesting that the two groups were very similar, writers almost always had a higher incidence of certain changes.
These include osteoarthritis in the joints between the lower jaw and the skull, the right collarbone, the right shoulder, the right thumb, the right knee and the spine – especially in the neck.
The team also found clear signs of physical stress on the humerus and left hip bone, as well as dents in the kneecaps and changes in the right ankle.
Although the researchers noted that some changes may have been influenced by the fact that some writers were older at the time of death, they said the results were consistent with the cross-legged or single-legged postures that writers adopted in ancient art, with their arms unsupported and their heads forward – a position that puts pressure on the spine.
They said changes around the jaw could also be related to such postures, or to scribes’ habit of chewing their rush tools to make a brush-like head. Changes in the thumb may be related to the pinching grip the pins held.
Brukner Havelková said it was very likely that scribes suffered from headaches at least occasionally, and there was evidence that they also suffered from jaw dislocations. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they also suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome in the hand, but unfortunately we can’t identify that from the bones,” she said.
Prof. Sonia Zakrzewski, an expert in bioarchaeology at the University of Southampton, who was not involved in the research, welcomed the study.
“It’s a very nice hypothesis because we know that repeated activity leads to changes in the skeleton and these are very plausible activities,” she said.
However, Professor Alice Roberts from the University of Birmingham said that without comparisons in modern humans it was difficult to argue that the changes identified were actually linked to activities and attitudes associated with being a writer.
“It has proven notoriously difficult to link arthritic changes in ancient skeletons to occupations (or) activities with any degree of accuracy,” she said.