The distinguished craniologist Prof. Emil Schmidt, of Leipzig, who owns a collection of several hundred mummies’ skulls, writes thus on the question now before us: “In no jaw have I ever found anything that could be attributed to the work of dentists: no fillings, no filing or trepanning of teeth, no prosthesis.”[18] Virchow, who also examined a great many Egyptian skulls, among which were several belonging to royal mummies, did not find any indications of dentists’ work;[19] and Mummery, as well, although he made the most conscientious researches on this subject, could not arrive at any positive results whatever.[20]
Between the affirmations of some and the negations of others, it is very difficult to say on which side the truth lies. For my own part, I fail to find that there is the least proof of the ancient Egyptians having known how to insert gold fillings and still less to apply pivot teeth. But at the same time I think it cannot be doubted that the Egyptian dentists knew how to apply artificial teeth. And even though it may not be possible to demonstrate this by direct proof, one is equally prone to admit it when one considers, on the one hand, the remarkable ability of the ancient Egyptians in all plastic arts, and, on the other hand, the great importance they attributed to the beautifying of the human body; so much so, that even in so ancient a document as the Ebers papyrus, one finds formulæ for medicaments against baldness, for lotions for the hair, and other kinds of cosmetics. Is it likely, therefore, that so refined and ingenious a people should not have found the means of remedying the deformity resulting from the loss of one or more front teeth?
Fortunately, however, we are not bound to content ourselves with simple suppositions, for a well-authenticated archæological discovery made in the month of May, 1862, has put us in possession of an irrefutable proof.
The discovery to which we allude is registered in Renan’s Mission de Phénicie, and was the result of researches made in the necropolis of Saida (the ancient Sidon) by Dr. Gaillardot, Renan’s colleague in his important scientific mission. In a grave in one of the most ancient parts of the necropolis, Dr. Gaillardot found, in the midst of the sand that filled the grave, a quantity of small objects, among which were two copper coins, an iron ring, a vase of most graceful outline, a scarab, twelve very small statuettes of majolica representing Egyptian divinities, which probably formed a necklace, to judge by the holes bored in them. But among the objects found (which, together with that we are about to mention, are now in the Louvre at Paris), the most important of all is “a part of the upper jaw of a woman, with the two canines and the four incisors united together with gold wire;[21] two of the incisors would appear to have belonged to another individual, and to have been applied as substitutes for lost teeth. This piece, discovered in one of the most ancient tombs of the necropolis, proves that dental art in Sidon was sufficiently advanced.”[22]
Phœnician appliance found at Sidon, as represented in a cut of Renan’s Mission de Phénicie.
To these words, literally translated from Renan’s work, we will only add the following considerations:
Egypt was, in its time, a great centre of civilization, whose influence was strongly predominant in all the neighboring region, and especially in ancient Phœnicia and in its large and industrious cities Tyre and Sidon. The remains discovered in many of the Phœnician tombs would of themselves alone be sufficient to demonstrate luminously the enormous influence exercised by the Egyptian civilization on the life and customs of that people. Now, if there were dentists in Sidon capable of applying false teeth, it may reasonably be admitted that the dentists of the great Egyptian metropoli Thebes and Memphis were able to do as much and more, the level of civilization being without doubt higher there than in Tyre or in Sidon, or in other non-Egyptian cities.