Nesirtyre

There is no evidence the ancient Egyptians used tampons to collect menstrual blood; this idea probably comes from misinterpreting the various recipes for vaginal suppositories in the medical papyri

The sometimes-cited “abortion” recipe from the Ebers papyrus is not an abortion recipe but rather a contraceptive treatment. The medical papyri do sometimes use ambiguous language in similar treatments, which have been cited by non-Egyptologists as referring to abortions, but these cases deal with contraceptive measures or stillbirths/miscarriages

Egyptian medicine didn’t “resort to magic only when purely rational treatments didn’t work”. While we do see an increase in treatments that invoke heka to effectuate a cure for ailments that may have been beyond the skillset of the Egyptian physician, heka does crop up in a lot of perfectly manageable situations such as treating a stuffy nose or untying a bandage. Heka was an integral part of medicine, not something that was “a last resort”

Egyptians didn’t have a form of proto-electroshock therapy for migraines/gout/other types of chronic pain; this idea comes from a paper that features a mistranslation of a recipe against migraines/headaches in the Ebers papyrus, which left out half of the remedy, imposed modern English idioms upon the original Egyptian, and ignored basically everything we know about Egyptian medical practices in order to make the electrotherapy claim hold weight

Yes, the Egyptians did have a pregnancy test that also doubled as a gender prediction test. A study from the 1960s found it fairly accurate when it came to predicting pregnancy, but it did not have a good track record for gender prediction. However, it is also true that we’re not altogether sure which grains respectively should be used for the gender prediction part of the test, so we can’t make any definitive claims

The Edwin Smith Papyrus makes mention of using the pulse as a measure of overall health, citing “if it (the heart) is weary to speak” as part of the diagnostic process. While there is some discussion on what the phrase used means exactly, it’s likely that the Egyptians knew of the connection between a strong pulse and good health roughly a millennium before the advent of Hippocratic medicine

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P 126

Gold, carnelian, lapis lazuli, and turquoise pendant from the Tomb of Ramses II, Egypt, 1279-1213 BC

~ Wooden figure of the Anubis-jackal, with long tail.

Cultures/Period: Late Period

Place of origin: Egypt

Gold Nile catfish pendant decorated with green glazed faience, chalcedony, turquoise, carnelian, lapis lazuli and black stone inlays.

Egypt, 18th Dynasty, 1985-1773 BC

In numerous magical texts the reciter claims to know the name of one or another god, thereby enabling that person to interact with and influence that deity. The same technique occurs in spells adressed to evil forces. The reciter announces that he knows the name of that entity and claims thereby to have power over that being by virtue of that special knowledge. Of course when calling a god, it is not about having power over him but rather calling on that particular aspect of the deity named.

Blue chalcedony intaglio featuring a hero with griffins, Greco-Persian, 6th-5th century BC