"Ancient dentistry " Topic

Oh! That must have hurt a lot!!

"The earliest evidence of ancient dentistry we have is an amazingly detailed dental work on a mummy from ancient Egypt that archaeologists have dated to 2000 BCE. The work shows intricate gold work around the teeth. This mummy was found with two donor teeth that had holes drilled into them. Wires were strung through the holes and then around the neighboring teeth."

From
link

Amicalement
Armand

I'd rather go without the teeth…

That's amazing.
The bone looks damaged by an abscess, abscesses were a cause of death in ancient Egypt, something else we learned from mummies.

That's a grill on the original gangsta!

Dude: That's a grill.

Wicked!

Joe Collins

Certainly looks like a hole from an abscess, but the bone is too smooth and rounded, so it looks like someone has cut the abscess out and filed the bone smooth before putting in the false teeth.

This must have hurt. A lot.

Cheers,
JohnG

On the other hand, I've not found a reputable source (like a university or museum website) with this picture, so I'd add a pinch of salt with this.

JohnG

Rather thin, nice wire for 2000BC

After a tooth is lost or removed the jaw bone will gradually regress and shrink. The sockets will also sort of fill in. The gap in the jaw above looks really crisp, as if it was cut and/or filed. Also, since there doesn't appear to be any healing the work might have actually been post-mortem. Or perhaps surgery had been performed to remove an abcess, but the patient died before healing could actually occur.

It's interesting, that's for sure.

If you are right, poor guy had screamed a lot before his dead.

Glad you had consider this as interesting guys!.

Amicalement
Armand

Ouch, I was just thinking about ancient dentistry today while sitting in the chair getting a root canal. I am so thankful that I live in modern times.