Here are some of the best inventions from Ancient Egypt!
11 - Breath mints & Toothpaste Many ancient Egyptians had to deal with deteriorating
teeth, partly because of their diet, which included plenty of honey and sugar!
As you can imagine, bad breath was a problem, especially for the nobles and royals who considered
themselves ‘pristine’.
The solution came in the form of the first breath mint, made from a combination of myrrh,
cinnamon, and frankincense.
These ingredients were often boiled together in a honey base and then shaped into pellets
for easy consumption.
While the breath mint pretty much just covered up some bad breath, the ancient Egyptian knew
that they actually had to clean their mouths too.
The world’s oldest known recipe for a toothpaste comes from Egypt.
According to the recipe that dates from around 5000 BC, the earliest known toothpaste was
made of powdered ashes of ox hooves, myrrh, powdered and burnt eggshells, and pumice.
I’m happy that THAT recipe was updated throughout the years!
Along with the Babylonians, ancient Egyptians are also credited with inventing the first
toothbrushes, which were frayed ends of wooden twigs.
Yeah, glad this was updated as well!
10 - Door locks The oldest known evidence of a door lock comes
from the ruins of an ancient Egyptian palatial complex, dating from around 2000 BC.
The design entailed a simple but effective pin tumbler lock.
The bolt that secured the door is made out of wood.
It has a slot with several holes on its upper surface.
A device attached to the door contained wooden pins which would drop into the holes and secure
the bolt.
The key, also wooden, is a large toothbrush–shaped object, with ‘bristles’ that were actually
the pegs that matched the holes and pins in the lock.
To open the door, the key would be inserted into the keyhole located below the pins and
lifted, raising the pins and allowing the bolt to be slid out.
Does that seem like it sounds familiar?
That’s because incredibly enough, the core design element of the pin tumbler lock is
still in use today!!!
9 - Papyrus Along with the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians
were one of the first people to develop their language into a codified form of writing.
All early forms of writing were pictograms – pictures.
But since you need something to write on, instead of taking all day to etch on a piece
of stone, there came papyrus.
The word “paper” comes from the Greek word papyros, or as we write it today, papyrus,
the writing material created by the ancient Egyptians.
Papyrus was made from the tough and fibrous interior of a stiff, reed-like plant that
grew, and still grows, in marshy areas along the banks of the Nile.
But, you also need ink to write right?
Yeahhhh the egyptians knew how to make their ink strong.
Evidence of ancient Egyptian ink can still be seen today, as thousands of years later,
the ink is either entirely or partially visible on manuscripts.
They mixed soot, vegetable gum and beeswax to make black ink.
To get other colors, they replaced the soot with other organic materials, such as ocher,
which made red-colored ink.
8 - Irrigation systems To make the best use of the waters of the
Nile river, the Egyptians developed systems of irrigation that allowed the Egyptians to
use the Nile's waters for a variety of purposes.
Of course, irrigation granted them greater control over the land.
Really, how else would they be able to plant things if the Nile is either flooding constantly
or there’s zero water for crops to grow?
But by doing the irrigation systems, they were able to divert flood water away from
certain areas, such as cities and gardens, to keep them from flooding.
The Egyptians also developed and utilized a form of water management known as basin
irrigation.
This practice allowed them to control the rise and fall of the river to best suit their
agricultural needs.
A crisscross network of earthen walls was formed in a field of crops that would be flooded
by the river.
When floods that would inevitably come, the water would be trapped in the basins formed
by the walls.
This grid would hold water longer than it would have naturally, allowing the earth to
become fully saturated for later planting.
Once the soil was fully watered, the floodwater that remained in the basin would simply be
drained to another basin that was in need of more water.
7 - Clocks In order to tell the time Egyptians invented
two types of clock – sundials and water clocks.
Hold up, what’s a water clock?!
We’ll get to that in a minute!
The oldest known sundial is from egypt.
Obviously, it’s a device that uses the sun to measure time.
There were many kinds of sundials used in the ancient world, but one of the best-preserved
sundials found from ancient Egypt consisted of a flat base with twelve lines projecting
from a hole that held an upright wooden or metal bolt.
As the bolt’s shadow moved across the lines, the time could be told.
As sundial technology continued to be improved, the ancient Egyptians were even able to tell
which were the longest and shortest days of the year.
But what happens at night, when the sun goes down?
The Egyptians read the time using water clocks at night.
It was made from a stone vessel shaped like an inverted cone, that had a tiny hole at
the bottom to allow water to drip.
The water dripped from the hole at an almost constant rate.
Along the inside of the vessel, columns of equally spaced markings allowed a person to
tell what the hour was by the level of the water.
I’m gonna have to say that’s definitely ingenious right there!
6 - Calendars In ancient Egypt, a calendar could mean the
difference between feast and famine.
Without a calendar, ancient Egyptians had no way of knowing when the annual flooding
of the Nile would begin.
Without that knowledge, their entire agricultural system would be put at risk, so a few thousand
years before the common era, they developed their own calendar.
The ancient Egyptian calendar was a solar calendar with a 365-day year.
Their calendar was so closely tied into farming that the Egyptians divided it up into three
main seasons: inundation, growing and harvest.
Each season had four months, with each month divided into 30 days.
However, if you add it all up, you only get 360 days a year, a bit short of an actual
year.
To make up the difference, the Egyptians added five days between the harvest and inundation
seasons.
These five extra days were designated as religious holidays set aside to honor the children of
the gods.
5 - Farming tools The Ancient Egyptians famously farmed the
black soils of the Nile Delta, an area with little rainfall that was irrigated by seasonal
floodwaters.
Ancient farmers living in Egypt used a number of tools to farm this land, many of which
are still a part of agriculture and gardening.
Ancient Egyptian farmers used a number of tools to work the soil of the Nile Delta.
Some of these are in use today, such as sickles, hand plows, and pitchforks.
A lesser-known tool called the shaduf, still used in some parts of the world, was important
for irrigation.
The Egyptians and Sumerians were among the first societies to employ the use of the plow
around 4000 B.C. Built from modified hand tools, the plows were so light and ineffective
that they are now referred to as "scratch plows" for their inability to dig deep into
the ground.
The whole concept of the plow changed around 2000 B.C., when the Egyptians first hooked
their plows to oxen.
The plow, combined with the steady rhythm of the Nile River, essentially revolutionized
the process and made farming much easier for the Egyptians!
4 - Scissors Many people mistakenly give credit to Leonardo
da Vinci for inventing scissors.
Although da Vinci was brilliant, scissors were around for a long time before he came
around.
Ancient Egyptians created a scissors-like device around 1500 B.C.
They were a single piece of metal, typically bronze, and made into two blades that were
controlled by a metal strip.
The strip kept the blades apart until they were squeezed together, and each blade was
sharp enough to do the cuts.
However, pivoted scissors of bronze or iron, in which the blades were pivoted at a point
between the tips and the handles, essentially the direct ancestor of modern scissors, were
invented by the Romans around 100 AD.
These scissors entered common use in not only ancient Rome, but also China, Japan, and Korea.
3 - Make up & wigs Egyptians appeared to care a great deal about
the way they looked.
Pharaohs had their own hairdressers and manicurists, and cosmetics was apparently big business
back then.
In ancient Egypt, cosmetics were widely used by both men and women.
Black eyeliner was applied daily and ocher was applied for rouge.
Oils and creams, often scented, kept skin moist in the dry climate.
Sometimes cosmetics were even given as part of their wages!
But make up alone wasn’t enough and wearing a wig signaled a person's rank in Egyptian
society.
Although a shaved head was a sign of nobility during most of the Egyptian kingdoms, the
majority of Egyptians kept their heads covered.
Wigs were worn in place of headdresses or, for special occasions, with elaborate headdresses.
The base of an Egyptian wig was a fiber-netting skullcap, with strands of human hair, wool,
flax, palm fibers, felt, or other materials attached.
The wig hair often stuck straight out from the skullcap, creating large, full wigs that
offered wearers protection from the heat of the sun.
I wonder how comfortable these wigs were!
2 - Prosthetics Surprising as it may be, we may have to thank
Ancient Egyptians for the prosthetics that are around today!
Two artificial Egyptian toes were found and researchers have suspected that those are
the world's oldest known prosthetic body parts.
One of the toes is a 3,000-year-old wooden prosthesis, which was found attached to a
female mummy in an ancient Egyptian grave site near Luxor and was determined to be from
between 950 to 710 BC.
The toe has been made of cartonnage, a sort of papier maché mixture made using linen,
glue and plaster.
Because of the precise construction of the ancient prosthesis, researchers guessed that
the owner, a priest's daughter, wanted the toe to look as natural as possible and be
comfortable to wear.
A study suggests that that was really the case.
Two volunteers who were both missing their right big toe tested the replicas of the ancient
toes.
The toe replicas, along with replicas of the leather Egyptian style sandals, were made
to fit each volunteer.
Results showed that the prosthetics would have made walking around in Egyptian sandals
much easier, suggesting they weren’t just used in burial or in some other non-practical
way, but in fact, worn as actual prosthetics!
1 - Surgery The Edwin Smith Papyrus is a comprehensive
medical text on surgery from Ancient Egypt that was written around 1600 BC.
This document was named after the dealer who bought the manuscript in 1862.
The document may have been a manual of military surgery, as it describes how to treat injuries,
such as fractures, wounds, and dislocations.
It’s the world’s oldest known surgical treatise and is 15.3 feet in length.
The front side has 377 lines in 17 columns, while the backside has 92 lines in five columns.
The vast majority of the papyrus is concerned with trauma and surgery, with short sections
on gynecology and cosmetics on the back.
On the front side, there are 48 cases of injury.
Each case details the type of injury, examination of the patient, diagnosis and prognosis, and
treatment.
The papyrus begins by addressing injuries to the head, and continues with treatments
for injuries to the neck, arms and torso, detailing injuries in descending anatomical
order, much like a modern anatomical exposition.
Definitely probably pretty handy to have in order to treat soldiers with serious injuries!
Here’s what’s next!