Scientists led by a Brigham Young University researcher have discovered that a 2,600-year-old Egyptian was buried with a modern-type orthopedic pin in his knee.
"(It is) one of the most remarkable examples of ancient skills that we have ever seen," said professor C. Wilfred Griggs, director of ancient studies at the Provo university. "This is truly an unheard-of type of thing."When the Egyptian Museum in San Jose, Calif., acquired the mummy, it was in a casket inscribed with the name of Usermontu, a priest. Sometimes caskets and mummies have become switched, so nobody can be certain it really is someone named Usermontu.
What is certain is that it dates from about 2,600 years ago - but the orthopedic pin is startlingly alike in design to those that were invented within the past generation.
A year ago, Griggs, world-famous for his excavations of an ancient Egyptian cemetery, was invited by some museums in San Jose to lecture about scientific investigations in archaeology. To give the talk a local flavor, he suggested that if the Egyptian Museum had any mummies, he could take his team of biologists, pathologists and textile experts to check over the ancient remains.
"We do all of these kinds of studies in our excavation projects in Egypt," he said.
The museums agreed, and during the summer of 1995, the team examined mummies in the Egyptian Museum. An X-ray showed that one of the mummies had a metal pin of some kind in the leg.
"We knew that in the X-ray, but we didn't unwrap the mummy and we didn't get to examine the leg firsthand," he said.
Intrigued by the pin's radiological shadow, they asked for permission to return and examine the pin in person.
Last week, Griggs returned to San Jose, accompanied by Dr. Richard T. Jackson, an orthopedic surgeon from Provo, and Dr. Bruce McIff, the chief of radiology for Intermountain Health Care in Provo.
Joining a couple of other doctors and other experts at the museum, "we then took more X-rays and unwrapped the leg," he said.
Surgeons analyzed the leg and studied the X-rays. The team drilled into the bone and removed samples of the bone and the metal of the pin.
"I just got back today so we don't have a final analysis," he said Saturday. But the metal seems to be silver.
The pin is about 7 or 8 inches long. It is flanged at one end, "just like pins would be used today in insertion into bones or into legs to . . . stabilize the rotation, to make sure the leg would not rotate or put too much stress on the bone."
The ancient physician had also used some kind of filling material to help set the pin in the bone.
"The doctors indicated that this procedure, the nature of the pin and the result, are much more sophisticated than we would have expected," he said.
"There's nothing like that. There is not an established school of surgery that we know of either for the living or the dead in the ancient world."
Apparently the pin was inserted soon after Usermontu died. It would have been intended "to hold the leg together so he would be complete and whole at the resurrection."
The ancient Egyptians believed in a physical resurrection, so they would have wanted Usermontu to be as complete as possible at burial.
One report suggested that perhaps the pin was inserted in recent times. Maybe the mummy was a sideshow attraction at some point and its leg came off, requiring re-attachment.
Griggs puts no stock in such speculation.
"There are some original or ancient linens that were actually stuck on the bone and the knee," he said. "I know ancient materials."
Ancient lipids and other material found between the bones and joint would not have been there if this had been a modern procedure.
In addition, the very quality of the procedure argues against some careless modern pinning-together.
"This was done by somebody who knew what he was doing, was very sophisticated in his craft," he said.
The device used some of the same principles that orthopedic surgeons employ today, "which is quite amazing."
The rod wasn't refined as today's are, but it was brilliantly designed to stabilize bones.
"The portion of the log that was in the femur (thigh bone) had a corkscrew-type configuration," Jackson said.
While the corkscrew was crudely done by today's standards, it was tapered from the end toward the middle. Where it continued across the knee joint toward the tibia or shin bone, it had three flutes or flanges.
"We still do that today, have three fluted flanges to enhance fixation and to prevent rotation. So this is fascinating, to think that they would have that sophistication that long ago."
Another amazing aspect that a fast-drying, tarry resin was used to fix the pin in the bones. That is also a precursor to what surgeons do today in total joint replacement: fix rods with a cementing material.
"I was impressed - surprised, of course, to see how advanced a fixation device like that would be 600 years B.C. And I can't help but think that the sophistication of that device suggests that was not done just this one time."
Jackson says the discovery opens up an area of conjecture about how much the ancients were able to do to help people who suffered a major trauma. Perhaps they used devices like this to bind together bones of the living, as well as to attach legs of the dead.
"It certainly was not done serendipitously," Jackson said.
What happened to Usermontu, anyway? Jackson suspects he may have lost his lower leg through an amputation of some kind. The kneecap and fibula (the long thin bone in the lower leg) were both missing.
Some sharp object amputated Usermontu's leg at the kneecap, and the priest probably died of the injury. After he died, "then they re-attached the limb in preparation for his interment."