Feb 14, 2011

Mummies' false toes put a spring in amputees' step

Egyptologist Jacky Finch has a thing for toes – specifically, ancient artificial toes that she believes are the earliest known prostheses. Finch's fetish motivated her to try something no one has ever done before: she recreated these unusual artifacts, strapped them to living volunteers and demonstrated that they could indeed have functioned as surrogate digits.

Her work suggests that prosthetic medicine took its first steps a few hundred years earlier than previously thought.

While studying man-made body parts found on Egyptian mummies, Finch, a researcher at the University of Manchester in the UK, stumbled on the two false big toes on which her latest research rests.

One, called the Greville Chester toe, was found near Luxor, Egypt. It was crafted some time before 600 BC from cartonnage – a kind of papier mâché made of linen and animal glue and covered in tinted plaster. The toe even includes an indentation that likely held an ornamental toenail.

The other belonged to a priest's daughter named Tabaketenmut, who lived sometime between 950 and 710 BC. If Tabaketenmut had diabetes, as some researchers have suggested, she may have lost her toe to ischaemic gangrene. Her prosthesis (shown above) is an elaborate three-piece construction of wood and what Finch thinks is leather, complete with a hinge that might mimic the flexibility of the joints.

Both artificial toes had holes for lacings that likely secured them to the feet.

Read more at New Scientist

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