Signs of an Ancient Epidemic

Egypt’s Old Kingdom was one of the most prosperous and powerful empires of the ancient world. With trading routes through the Mediterranean and control over large areas of northern Africa, its peace and prosperity allowed an unprecedented flowering of arts and technology.

Its era saw the assembly of the first large stone structure and the stepped pyramid of Djoser at Sakkara, as well as the construction of the Sphinx and the three great pyramids at Giza.

But after nearly 600 years of power, the Old Kingdom faded away around 2184 BC for reasons that have remained hidden in the mists of history.

New discoveries at the Egyptian port city of Mendes by Canadian archeologist Donald Redford may change our understanding of that period, however. Redford has found signs of mass graves at Mendes dating from around 2200 BC, which suggests that a widespread outbreak of disease may have doomed the Old Kingdom, leading to a period of diminished Egyptian influence that spanned 140 years until the beginning of the Middle Kingdom.

Redford so far has excavated only a small portion of the site, but what he has found is highly unusual--”scattered skeletons, tossed in like a massacre had just taken place,” he said. But since there are no other signs of armed conflict, a more likely explanation is disease, he said.

He estimates that there are as many as 10,000 corpses in the burial ground.

In one spot, he found the remains of what appeared to be a girl of about 14 embracing what he presumed to be her brother, a boy of about 8. “It was a very poignant scene,” he recalled.

Although many possible explanations have been offered for the demise of the Old Kingdom, an epidemic could well be one of the major causes, according to archeologist Douglas Brewer of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

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In Egypt during this period, he said, “All of a sudden, people were packed together very tightly in communities . . . and they were not in the most sanitary situation. There was sewage and garbage in the streets and packs of wild dogs running around at night. Plus, you have a population which, except for the elite, had a limited variety of food to eat”--bread, beer, fish and seasonal vegetables.

There was not much red meat, which provides many nutrients and minerals, and no vitamin and mineral supplements. “We can see anemia very clearly in skeletons from the first two dynasties, going into the Old Kingdom,” Brewer said. Such conditions could leave the population highly vulnerable to a new infectious agent, particularly one brought in through a seaport like Mendes, he added.

The mass graves are just one of many discoveries Redford has made at Mendes, where he has been working since 1991. “This was my dream,” he said in a recent interview. “I have a concession [exclusive archeological rights granted by the Egyptian government] on a piece of land that is 2 1/2 miles north to south and 800 meters [about half a mile] east to west, and I will probably spend the rest of my life working there.”

Although he has spent most of his professional career at the University of Toronto, he recently reached the mandatory retirement age of 65. So beginning this month, he has moved his base of operations to the United States, settling in at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Because most Egyptologists have chosen to work in the southern areas of the country, at such sites as Thebes, Memphis, Giza and Amarna, “we still know far too little about the northern part of Egypt,” says archeologist Richard Fazzini of the Brooklyn Museum. Redford’s investigations “will be important for our knowledge of trade and contacts with other parts of the world because Mendes is on the way to the Middle East.”

There are not many good sites left in the Nile delta. Most have been taken over and destroyed by farmers expanding their crop lands. But until early in this century, Mendes sat pristine in the middle of a marshy area where it could be reached only by boat. As a consequence, it has not suffered the devastation that has affected other sites in the north.

Even after the demise of the Old Kingdom, Mendes remained a thriving port, albeit somewhat of a cultural backwater, for the next millennium and a half, through the Middle and New Kingdoms. But in the 6th century BC it was conquered by the Persians, beginning a period of brutal warfare.

In 404 BC, the Pharaoh Nepherites threw the Persians out and established Mendes as the capital of Egypt for 20 years, building his own tomb on the site. But in 343 BC, under the rule of Artaxerxes III, the Persians returned, leveling the city and enslaving its inhabitants.

Redford has found the tomb of Nepherites, but it is empty now. “The Persians destroyed its contents and threw the fragments over the city wall.” Artaxerxes, he added, “was apparently a very vindictive man.”

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Eleven years later, the city was conquered again, this time by Alexander the Great. “Alexander and the Greeks were welcomed as liberators, not as conquerors,” Redford said. The Greeks ruled the region peacefully for 300 years, and Mendes was famed not only as a port but also as the center of a great perfume industry.

Redford’s teams have found hundreds of chest-high, clay amphoras dating from the period, each with two large looped handles through which poles could be inserted to carry them. The jugs were used to import oil that was the base for the perfumes.

That prosperity lasted for only about 100 years, however. The branch of the Nile that served Mendes began to dry up and many of the city’s occupants retreated to healthier cities in the south. The city never regained its former glory.

The region was conquered in 30 BC by the Romans. One of Redford’s more intriguing finds dates from this period, during the reign of Tiberius. One of Redford’s students found a set of human bones belonging to an individual who had apparently been crucified.

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“The arm and leg bones had been broken intentionally, probably by a sharp rap with some blunt instrument,” Redford said. Large spike holes in the ankles came into alignment when the ankles were overlapped. “It looks pretty conclusive,” he said, and is an important find because “few crucified individuals have been identified in excavations anywhere.”

Other individuals remain in the same burial chamber and Redford suspects, or at least hopes, that they too are victims of crucifixion.

For the next millennium, life in Mendes remained peaceful. In about the 12th century AD, however, its citizens staged a tax revolt against the Egyptian government. The uprising was suppressed, and the city gradually faded into insignificance.