WAS THE "DEVICE FOR EXAMINATION OF THE LARYNX" SIGNED BY THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS?
The so-called "mouth opening ritual" was an integral part of ancient Egyptian funeral rituals. According to the testimony of the "Egyptian Book of the Dead", the mouth of the deceased was opened only on the seventieth day after embalming. Of course, in the era of the Middle Kingdom, this was already just a ritual. When performing it, a special instrument was inserted into the mouth of the mummy, and the priest pronounced special spells.
In general, there is a number of evidences that in ancient times the mouth was actually opened, for which a "spreader made of bronze" or "a spatula made of bronze" was used. As Andreas Oklitz (Berlin) noted, this “incisor” is remarkably similar to the metal instrument that is still used today in emergency care for the introduction of an artificial respiration tube. This instrument is called a laryngoscope. It was invented in 1929 by Magill, Macintosh and others. Thanks to the laryngoscope, a person who has lost consciousness can be brought back to life by freeing the airways even if the victim hardly breathes.
The so-called "Hunefer papyrus" from burial no. 290 in Thebes depicts a scene depicting the ritual of opening the mouth of a mummy.
The priest holds the "spreader made of bronze" in his right hand, and on the side table, a handle is visible, deflected twice at an angle of 90 °, that is, it is actually parallel to the spatula itself. As Oklitz correctly identified, these instruments do not correspond to a modern laryngeal spatula (laryngoscope) with a single handle tilted at 90 °, but to Magill's design from the early 20th century. It remains for us to add that this design is partially used in the 1969 model.
The instrument in the left hand of the priest, which is located on the side table, to the right of the "unclamp", can be a breathing tube (a tube for air supply). At the end of this "air tube" is a device that could very well be a cylinder for injecting compressed air. It has not just a curved shape, like modern air supply devices, but a convex-concave-convex one. This form was widely used as an attachment tube. The length of the tube is 1/5 of the priest's height, that is, 30-32 cm with a person's height of 150-160 cm. The diameter of the tube was approximately 1/20 of its length, that is, 1.5-1.6 cm. This is a little too large compared to the outer diameter of modern pipes is 1.3 cm. Since no technical parameters are given in the Hunefer papyrus, all dimensions are approximate.
The breathing tube was inserted with two hands. With one hand, the laryngoscope was inserted into the patient's mouth, opening the entrance to the larynx, and with the other, a tube was inserted to supply air. The fact that the priest holds the "laryngoscope" in one hand and the air tube in the other can be considered the strongest argument in favor of Oklitz's hypothesis.
To the right of the air tube, an even thinner "rod" lies on the side table. Perhaps this is an introductory pivot. It was inserted into a more flexible tube to make it easier to insert it into the larynx, and then pulled back.
There are two spray cans above the "bronze spreader". Although their purpose as a breathing cushion, as they say, lies on the surface, since its outer diameter is only approx. 6 cm (and the volume is only 100 milliliters) is too small, and moreover, it does not have a valve for mandatory breathing. No, in this case we are talking about a "device for examining the larynx", created in 1988 by D. F. Nunn.
Such a device had a typical volume of 50-100 milliliters without a valve. It was used after inserting the air tube; he was put on, squeezed and released. If the breathing tube was correctly aligned with the insert, the device was refilled with exhaled air. In case of incorrect (life-threatening!) Alignment of these tubes, the device remained unfilled.
Side table for opening the mouth ritual. There are many "bronze tools" that are striking, designed for different sizes of mouth and tongue.
Promotional video:
Above the air tube and to the right of the laryngeal instrument, a shorter hose is shown, at the end of which there is no device for receiving exhaled air. Perhaps this is a Wendl pipe. These tubes are used to help patients who are unconscious but still breathing spontaneously. This tube is inserted through the nose into the pharynx (that is, from above into the larynx). The length of the Wendl tube is 15-16 cm, which is about half the length of the air supply tube and is quite consistent with the dimensions of the modern Wendl tube.
In the photo: Modern laryngoscopes.
To the right of the Wendl tube is something like a "syringe", which, however, does not have a needle or any nozzles.
I would like to note that the cat was deliberately left over the side table. Due to its snub-nosed muzzle, the cat was apparently used as a training specimen to insert the air tube. Even today, despite a wide selection of analogues, it is used for experiments in US laboratories. For the ancient Egyptians, a mummified cat could well be used as a kind of experimental model. The priests would easily remove all doubts about the permissibility of using sacred cats for this purpose, for the ritual of opening the mouth was also considered sacred.
While Oklitz’s key thesis, equating the opening of the mouth with the insertion of an air tube, is a bold and new hypothesis, parts of it have been proposed earlier. The opinion that medicine and surgery in Egypt in the era of the Old Kingdom (about 1000 years before the creation of the Hu-nefer papyrus) had knowledge and capabilities that later turned out to be lost, was expressed by Rowling. He suggested that the ritual of opening the mouth is a symbolic reproduction of a specific medical procedure (washing the mouth of a newborn). The tools shown in the lowest row on the side table may be tools for assisting a woman in labor. Pal proved that the mouth-opening ritual was performed on at least some of the mummies. Stetter mentions the discovery of a panel dating back to ancient times, and a similar panel dating from the era of the Old Kingdom. This panel depicts a tracheotomy (surgery to open the airway inside the larynx, instead of inserting a tube through the mouth described above).
If the hypothesis that the ritual of opening the mouth is a symbolic analogue of the introduction of a tube for supplying air turns out to be true, this will mean a real revolution in the history of medicine in Ancient Egypt. Extensive discussions on this topic in the specialized press devoted to the problems of medicine and Egyptology are needed.