Proof Positive
40 Reasons to Excercise - Video
The Attitude of Gratitude
School of Health & Wellness
By Milton G. Crane, M.D. and Barbara G. Crane, R.D. of Weimar Institute
Introduction (1-4)
About a week after the children of Israel were led out of slavery from Egypt, they began to become worried about adequate food. What should they do? Should they slaughter their animals? Should they return to the Nile Valley? In Exodus 15 we read of this experience and of God's plans to test their faith and build up their trust in Him.
They had thought that they were going the shortest route up a narrow strip of land toward Palestine. Instead, they found themselves following a cloud across arid land with limited vegetation and no gardens. A few days' journey into the wilderness, these two million plus people find their quickly gathered food supply had dwindled away. And what is God's request? "If you will carefully listen to the voice of the Lord, your God, do what is right before Him, give ear to His commands and observe all injunctions, then I will put on you none of the diseases I put on Egypt; for I am the Lord your Healer." Exodus 15:26 (ML)
What were the diseases of the Egyptians? Let us visit the tombs of the Egyptians for the answer.
The embalming process not only served as a way to honor the dead, but it also rendered a religious purpose. At first it was limited to Pharaohs, notables, and priests. Later on, the bodies of even the poorer class were preserved, the poorest with cedar or radish seed oil. (1) Could it be that God allowed them to have certain delusions regarding the state of the dead so that they would preserve their bodies for us to see their diseases? Isa. 66:4
They believed that man was protected during his life by three spiritual elements, only one of which abandoned his body at death. The KA was a man's, double which was born with him and embodied his qualities and characteristics. It resided with him in the tomb. The BA, after death, traveled with the sun on its journey and returned to visit the deceased each morning. These spiritual elements, they believed, were real entities, requiring a place in which to dwell for eternity, and requiring provisions of food as well.
Destruction of the dead body or loss of the food offering would mean that the man's soul would be destroyed, and he would lose immortality. (2)
The long and elaborate process of embalming included the removal of four organs to be placed in canopic jars, - the liver in the human-headed jar, the lungs in the ape-headed jar, the stomach in the jackal-headed jar, and the intestines in the hawk-headed jar.
After the embalming process, the body was placed in a coffin within a coffin. Priests and members of the family accompanied the remains to the tomb where ceremonies were performed to restore the ability to see, hear, speak, move and eat. At the close of the ceremony, these words were spoken, "You live again, you revive always, you have become young again, you are young again, and forever." (2)
Color pictographs on the walls of the tombs furnish additional descriptions of the lifestyle of the Egyptians. From the lowly slave to Pharaoh on his throne, innumerable mummies have been preserved for thousands of years. About 33,000 mummies have been examined at autopsy. Since these initial autopsies in 1880-1900, many more have been examined by x-ray. From these sources, from the Egyptian medical papyri, and from the Bible, we gather considerable insight into the lifestyle of the Egyptians and knowledge about the maladies of their time.
Lifestyle in Egypt (1-4)
Of particular interest to us is the lifestyle at the time of the Exodus. The Bible record of the desires of the Egyptians for certain foods can be recognized in the appetites of their former slaves. Ex. 16:3; Num. 11:4, 5
We find that butchering was supervised by the priests. The eating of meat included the eating of the fat and blood of the animal.
They made cheese, drank milk, and ate butter. Milk was suggestive of something very good to Israel. Ex. 3:8; Deut. 32:14
They probably ate eggs with salt even as we do now. Job 6:6
Records indicate that Egypt was a major customer of Crete for olive oil. This and the above items, no doubt, assured them a relatively high-fat, high-cholesterol, low-fiber diet.
Archeological evidence indicates that they had designed a special grain mill, called a saddle mill, to get white flour with grinding. They also had crude sieves (5) which they used to separate out a white flour with nearly the same extraction of the bran and aleurone as in modern times.
Some modern Egyptians consider the fat of an animal between two slices of white bread to be a favorite sandwich.
Pictographs indicate that a highborn lady would call a servant to catch her self-induced vomitus so that she could return to the banquet table.
They had stills for brewing beer, and prostitutes were common.
They had slaves and chariots for a degree of sedentary living.
Sanitation was very poor with pollution of soil and streams. The left hand was used to clean one's self after defecation.
They had a medical school supervised by the priests. They had prescriptions for everything. Some of them made good sense – willow bark for aspirin, opium for pain, and garlic and radish seed oil for antibiotics. Many prescriptions included the blood or dung of insects or animals. They had no real quarantine laws like those that God gave to Israel. Lev. 12; Num. 5
Their religion was atheistic pantheism. They worshipped the materialistic host of heaven and other things of nature. Representations of their gods were grotesque combinations of man and animals. (6)
The lifestyle was similar to modern-day atheists. And, as we shall see, the diseases of the Egyptians were the same as those seen in modern times.
Diseases of the Egyptians
The Egyptians had a lifestyle quite similar to the present lifestyle of modern civilized societies.
Specimens of arteries from mummies have shown the presence of extensive arteriosclerosis with cholesterol deposits.
A number of mummies exhibited thickening of the arterial wall with fibrosis, lesions indistinguishable from arteriosclerosis of our time.
Dental caries was relatively common and severe in many instances. Very ancient mummies had good teeth in comparison.
Obesity was common, as was gallstones.
Descriptions by physicians of the time indicate the presence of diabetes mellitus in their time.
From 50%-90% of the adult mummies had degenerative arthritis of the spine. X-rays of Ramses II showed severe degenerative arthritis of the hip joint and arteriosclerosis of all the major arteries of the lower extremities. His son, Merneptah (1236-1223 B.C.), was obese, had severe degenerative arthritis, atherosclerosis, and poor dentition. (2)
They suffered from the scourge of leprosy, tuberculosis, bubonic plague, various forms of dysentery, malaria, and poliomyelitis.
Gonorrhea and trachoma were common causes of blindness.
All of the above and 175 more diseases have been positively identified.
"And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in word and deeds." Acts 7:22. Moses must have attended the medical school in Egypt during the first 40 years of his life. Yet we do not find him using any of the prescriptions for the ailments of Israel in the wilderness. He may not have thought that these were important enough to write about, but I rather think that he used the better ways that God revealed to him. We shall examine them in the part.
1. Ghalioungui, P: The House if Life. B.M.
Israel, Amsterdam, 1973.
2. Harris, JE and KR Weeks: X-raying the Pharaohs. Charles Scribner's
Sons, New York, NY, 1973
3. Brothwell, D and AT Sandison: Diseases of Antiquity. Charles
Thomas, Springfield, IL, 1967.
4. Thorwald, J: Science and Secrets of Early Medicine. Harcourt,
Brace & World. New York, NY, 1962.
5. Trowell, N: Dietary fibre, coronary heart disease, and diabetes
mellitus: Historical aspects of fibre in the food. Plant Foods for
Man 1:11, 1973.
6. Bonn, C: Studies in Magical Amulets Chiefly Graeco-Egyptian.
University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 1950.