One of the oldest known cases of the ‘Black Death’ plague has been discovered in the ancient DNA of a 3,290-year-old Egyptian mummy.
the virus Yersinia pestisThe bubonic plague, or bubonic plague, is known for the havoc it wreaked in medieval Europe, where the deadly disease wiped out nearly 50 million people between 1346 and 1353 in a historic deadly pandemic.
Although teams of archaeologists and geneticists previously located traces of and pestis In 5,000-year-old human skeletal remains unearthed in what is now Russia, the new find marks the first discovery of the disease outside Eurasia.
The infected mummy offers new clues about how the deadly plague first spread westward and provides “molecular evidence for the presence of the plague in ancient Egypt.”
Previous studies in recent decades have offered evidence that the bubonic plague spread via trade routes across ancient empires in North Africa before reaching Europe, contradicting earlier theories that it simply moved from east to west. .
An ancient Egyptian medical text known as the Ebers Papyrus, dating to 1500 BC. C., describes a disease similar to the “Black Death” that “produced a telltale bubo” of “petrified” pus.
Then, in 2004, British archaeologists found evidence of the disease in ancient Nile rats and fleas, suggesting its presence without proving any human infection.
While the DNA samples the team in Italy took from the plague-infected mummy showed “an already advanced state of disease progression,” the evidence is just the beginning of an exploration into whether ancient Egypt faced its own ” Black Death”.
The oldest known case of the “Black Death” in western Eurasia has been discovered in the genome of a 3,290-year-old Egyptian mummy, thanks to researchers in Italy who worked with a mummy preserved in the Museo Egizio in Turin. Above, another mummy from the Museo Egizio collection.
Radiocarbon dating techniques place the “Black Death”-infected mummy as having lived somewhere around Egypt’s New Kingdom era, between 1686 and 1449 BC Above, coffins that also date to the Empire era New unearthed in the Tuna el Gebel district of Minya, Egypt, last year.
“We cannot infer how widespread the disease was during this time,” the 12-person team explained in their presentation at the academic conference at the European Meeting of the Association of Paleopathology.
But as contagious as this mummy may have been, the interdisciplinary team of viral archaeologists and paleontologists believes it was mummified by hand.
Radiocarbon dating techniques place the mummy as having lived somewhere around Egypt’s New Kingdom era, between 1686 and 1449 BC. C., although they admitted that “its exact origin within Egypt is unknown.”
The technique measures trace isotopes of carbon atoms in once-living tissues, specifically the radioactive version of carbon, carbon-14. Animals absorb carbon-14 when they breathe, but they slowly lose it all as the centuries pass after their death.
The team’s ancient mummy was an adult male, from the collection of the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy, which houses finds from ancient Egypt. Tombs of Kha and Merit of the New Kingdomamong other valuable specimens and artifacts.
Samples of both bone tissue and intestinal contents were taken from the mummy for a type of DNA test known as ‘shotgun metagenomics’, which analyzes unknown samples of genetic material to detect any and all known biological organisms they may contain.
Once they obtained clues to the bubonic plague with this method, the samples were further processed focusing on obtaining “low-coverage genome-wide data from both the human host and the and pestis pathogen.’
The team is now using that viral DNA map to explore how and pestis It evolved and varied between its time in ancient Egypt, the Middle Ages and today.
Above, a computer illustration of the plague bacteria (Yersinia pestis) showing its oval or “ovoid” shape with a bipolar staining technique.
Above, a close-up of one of the New Kingdom mummies discovered in the Tuna el Gebel district of Minya, Egypt, last year on October 15, 2023.
‘Yersinia pestis “, the team noted in their presentation, “devastated humanity with three historically documented pandemics.”
And one of those plagues occurred between the era of the New Kingdom of Egypt and the Black Death that struck Europe in the 14th century.
It is known to historians as the Justinian Plague of the Eastern Roman Empire, which spread across the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Near East in the 6th century AD.
China and Mongolia had their own brush with bubonic plague more recently, in the mid-19th century.
The new research, presented in August, may reverse previous research that suggested the plague spread to Europe through Silk Road traders.
Bubonic plague is the most common form of plague and is often transmitted by the bite of an infected flea. Transmission of bubonic plague from person to person is rare, and the vector is usually “flea-bitten” animals, such as rats and dogs.
The infection greatly affects the immune glands called lymph nodes, causing them to become swollen and painful, and progress to open sores in untreated patients.
People infected with plague usually develop an acute febrile illness with other nonspecific systemic symptoms, such as sudden fever, chills, head and body aches, weakness, vomiting, and nausea, after an incubation period of one to seven days.
Fortunately, bubonic plague is easily treated today with antibiotics, if not prevented by preventative measures.