This book explores the health of ancient Egyptians living in the New Kingdom village of Deir el-Medina. Through an interdisciplinary approach that combines skeletal analysis with textual evidence, the book examines how social factors, such as social support, healthcare access, and economic stability, played crucial roles in buffering individuals from stress and promoting good health. This is the first, comprehensive book on the bioarchaeology of Deir el-Medina including data from human remains spanning the site’s New Kingdom occupation. This book highlights how the Social Determinants of Health can be used to explain how past people maintained their health.
This book explores the health of ancient Egyptians living in the New Kingdom village of Deir el-Medina. Through an interdisciplinary approach that combines skeletal analysis with textual evidence, the book examines how social factors, such as social support, healthcare access, and economic stability, played crucial roles in buffering individuals from stress and promoting good health. This is the first, comprehensive book on the bioarchaeology of Deir el-Medina including data from human remains spanning the site’s New Kingdom occupation. This book highlights how the Social Determinants of Health can be used to explain how past people maintained their health.
This volume exposes one of the world’s oldest medical marketplaces and the emergence of medical professionalization within it. Through an unprecedented analysis of the Mesopotamian healing goddesses as well as asûs, a diverse group of “healers”, Irene Sibbing-Plantholt demonstrates that from the Middle Babylonian period onwards, the goddess Gula was employed as a divine legitimization model for scholarly, professional asûs. With this work, Sibbing-Plantholt provides a unique insight in processes of medical competition and legitimization in ancient Mesopotamia, which speak to similar processes in other societies.
This volume exposes one of the world’s oldest medical marketplaces and the emergence of medical professionalization within it. Through an unprecedented analysis of the Mesopotamian healing goddesses as well as asûs, a diverse group of “healers”, Irene Sibbing-Plantholt demonstrates that from the Middle Babylonian period onwards, the goddess Gula was employed as a divine legitimization model for scholarly, professional asûs. With this work, Sibbing-Plantholt provides a unique insight in processes of medical competition and legitimization in ancient Mesopotamia, which speak to similar processes in other societies.