One of the oldest known cases of the ‘Black Death’ has been found in the ancient DNA of a 3,290-year-old Egyptian woman.
Virus Yersinia pestisor the bubonic plague, is known for the chaos it caused in ancient Europe – where the disease killed an estimated 50 million people from 1346 to 1353 in the deadliest epidemic in history.
When teams of archaeologists and geneticists already found signs of Y. insects in 5,000-year-old human remains excavated in what is now Russia, the findings indicate the first discovery of the disease outside of Eurasia.
An infected woman is providing new insights into how the deadly plague began to spread across the West and provides ‘molecular evidence’ of an ancient pandemic. Egypt.’
Previous research over the past few decades has provided insight into the bubonic plague that spread through trade routes in ancient kingdoms in northern Africa before hitting Europe, disproving previous theories that it only spread from east to west.
An Egyptian medical book known as the Ebers Papyrus, from the 1500s BC, describes a disease like the ‘Black Death’ that ‘produces a bubo’ of dangerous pus.
Then in 2004, British archaeologists found evidence of the disease in rats and fleas dating back thousands of years, suggesting its existence without confirming any human disease.
While the DNA shows the group Italy took a plague-stricken woman showed ‘early development of the disease,’ evidence is just the beginning of the investigation of whether ancient Egypt faced its own ‘Black Death’.
The oldest known case of the ‘Black Death’ in western Eurasia has been found in the genome of a 3,290-year-old Egyptian woman, thanks to Italian researchers working with the woman kept by the Museo Egizio in Turin. Above, a woman is preserved in the collection of the Museo Egizio
Radiocarbon dating methods place the women infected with the ‘Black Death’ to live somewhere around the time of the New Kingdom of Egypt, between 1686-1449 BC. Above, coffins dating back to the New Kingdom period were excavated in the Tuna el Gebel area of Minya, Egypt last year.
‘We cannot predict how the disease spread at this time,’ the team of 12 explained in their academic paper. European Meeting of the Paleopathology Association.
But, despite how contagious this woman was, a diverse group of archaeologists and virologists believe it was cut by hand.
Radiocarbon dating methods indicate that the woman lived somewhere during the New Kingdom of Egypt, between 1686-1449 BC, although she admitted that her ‘origin from Egypt is unknown.’
This method measures isotopes of carbon atoms in tissue once present, specifically the radioactive form of carbon, carbon-14. Animals absorb carbon-14 as they breathe, but gradually lose it all as many years pass after their death.
The ancient mother of the group was an old man, taken from the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy, which is found in ancient Egypt. The New Kingdom tombs of Kha and Meritamong the samples are valuable antiques.
Both skeletal and intestinal tissues were taken from the mothers for DNA testing ‘shotgun metagenomics’ – which measures an unknown sample of the genome of all known living organisms.
After having the symptoms of bubonic plague from this method, the samples were reprocessed to focus on finding ‘a low level of human type and Y. insects pathogens.’
The team is now using viral DNA mapping to find out how Y. insects it changed and varied between its time in ancient Egypt, the Middle Ages and today.
Above, a digital image of Plague bacteria (Yersinia pestis) showing its oval or ‘ovoid’ shape with a bipolar staining pattern.
Above, a close-up of one of the New Kingdom mummies found in the Tuna el Gebel region of Minya, Egypt last year, on October 15, 2023.
‘Yersinia pestis ,’ the group said in their article, ‘ravaged the people with three plagues recorded in history.’
And one of those epidemics happened between the era of the New Kingdom of Egypt and the Black Death that fell in Europe in the 14th century.
Historians know it as the Justinian Plague of the Eastern Roman Empire, which spread to the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Near East in the 600s AD.
China and Mongolia had their own brush with the bubonic plague as recently as the mid-1800s.
A new study, presented this August, may continue Previous studies have shown that the plague spread to Europe through Silk Road traders.
Bubonic plague is a very common plague and is usually spread by the bite of an infected flea. Human-to-human transmission of bubonic plague is rare, and the vector is usually flea-bitten animals, such as rats and dogs.
The disease mainly affects the lymph nodes, causing them to become swollen and painful, progressing to open sores in untreated patients.
People who have the plague usually have a flu-like illness with other unexplained symptoms – such as sudden fever, chills, headache and body aches, weakness, vomiting and nausea – after 1 to 7 days.
Fortunately, bubonic plague is easily treated these days with antibiotics, not prevented through preventative measures.
