Road to work - the path to arthritis

The daily way to work and back sometimes affects health more seriously than the labor activity itself. And this problem did not arise yesterday, the ancient Egyptians have already encountered it. This conclusion was received by Anne E. Austin, an osteologist and Egyptologist of Stanford University. She studies the medicine and illnesses of people of the ancient world and recently published the results of studies of the remains of workers - carving and artists who adorned the tombs in the Kings Valley.

The researcher worked in Deir El-Medin. So now it is called a village, which was built around 1300 BC. e. Especially for workers and their families. It was located among tombs - an island of living in the world of the deceased. From 1922 to 1951, the French Egyptologist Bernard Bruyier (Bernard Bruyier), but osteology was still in its infancy, and Bruinier left many bodies in their graves from 1922 to 1951. In 2012–2014, Austin first examined these remains as part of an expedition of the French Institute of Eastern Archeology.

Initially, Dr. Austin was interested in the extent to which physical activity and social status of people affect the state of their bones, namely, the development of osteoarthritis of the lower extremities. With osteoarthritis, the cartilage covering the joint surfaces is destroyed, and the bones are deformed and grow. Its occurrence depends on many factors: age, floor, weight, genetic predisposition and repeated loads. Bioarchaeologists everywhere reveal traces of this disease, so that it is easy to study its frequency.

The artisans who lived in Deir El-Medin had high qualifications, almost all were competent. They left thousands of records: letters, court claims, accounts, prayers on clay skulls, stone tiles and fragments of papyrus. In addition, many accounting documents have been preserved.

Thanks to these texts about the daily life of Deir El-Medina, more is known than many other settlements of the ancient world. The state appreciated the work of the inhabitants of the village and provided them well. They had housing, servants who did the hardest work, good food. All this service was provided to the cutters so that they spent strength exclusively on work. And the work was hard, I had to spend many hours in dark and stuffy tombs. Thus, the place of craftsmen from Deir El-Medina on the social ladder is above ordinary workers, but below the elite.

Anne Austin compared their remains with the previously found bones and mummies with five cemeteries of other settlements of Egypt and Nubia, in which the nobles, representatives of the middle class are buried and were buried.

Workers. Her guess was confirmed: osteoarthritis was quite common in Nubia and Egypt and its frequency corresponded to social status. The disease was found in residents of Deir El-Medina on average in 40% of cases. This is more than officials and members of their families buried in the Western cemetery of Giza, and nobles, in which the incidence of osteoarthritis was approximately 6%.

Officials did not have to withstand heavy physical exertion, which can not be said about the workers who built Amarn, the new capital of the pharaoh Akhenaten. The builders tossed stones weighing about 70 kg, possibly manually, which greatly loaded the joints of the hands and spine. In 47.7% of the builders of Amarna, osteoarthritis was detected on the lower extremities and in almost 66% on the upper. Their work was clearly harder than the decorators of royal tombs.

Interestingly, the frequency of osteoarthritis in the artisans of Deir El-Medina turned out to be approximately the same as the builders of the pyramids in Giza. It is generally accepted that although many scientists doubt this that the builders were organized in brigades that transported stone blocks from the career to the pyramid under construction. Judging by the frequency of osteoarthritis of the lower extremities, this work was no harder than that of Deir-El-Medina carriers, and less grueling than the builders of Amarn. However, this cannot be asserted with confidence, since archaeologists are not sure that only builders are buried in the cemeteries of Amarn and Giza. Local residents could be there.

Exploring the remains, Anne Austin drew attention to one strange feature. Among the artisans of Deir El-Medina, the osteoarthrites of the lower extremities more often hit his knees and ankle, while in residents of other places mostly femoral joints suffered.

According to modern clinical data, in women osteoarthritis develops more often, and in the knee and ankle - significantly more often than in men. But in Deir El-Medin, he hit mainly artisans, and not members of their families. It is logical to assume that the disease was associated with their professional activity, but there is a mystery here: painting and carving on stone loaded more the upper body, not legs.

According to Ann Austin, the solution lies in the fact that the workers regularly went to work through Theban hills. Between the village and the valley of the kings are less than two kilometers, but the area is uneven. Every week, artisans went to a working camp, which rises 151 meters above the village, and returned home for the weekend. To get from the camp to work, they needed to go down 93 meters. The detailed records of 1402 business days, weekends and holidays, as well as diseases due to illness have been preserved. Thanks to them, the researcher calculated that artisans had to climb steep rocky slopes on average 161 days a year. They began to work as teenagers, they died at 40-50 years, obviously not having time to rest. Consequently, the workshop’s working experience was 25–35 years, and during this time the road to work managed to provoke osteoarthritis of the knees and ankle, although not in the most severe form.

The valley of the kings was strictly guarded, outsiders were not allowed to go there, so women and children Deir El-Medina did not have to climb and down. They walked along the relatively flat area between the village and the coast of the Nile.

According to modern medicine, ascents and descents, the knees are much stronger than ordinary walking, in addition, they often lead to joint injuries and sprains of ankles, which also increase the frequency of osteoarthritis. Thus, the terrain can affect the disproportionately high frequency of diseases of the knee joint.

The fact that the main factor that caused the disease was not the professional activity of artisans, but their path to work and from work causes special interest. This circumstance should be taken into account by other researchers: before drawing conclusions about the severity of one or another activity, it is necessary to take into account all the factors that accompany it. This remark applies not only to ancient, but also in modern populations.

Natalia Reznik

1. Austin A.E. The Cost of a Commete: a multidisciplinary approach to osteoarthritis in New Kingdom egypt // International Journal of Ostoarcheology. 2016. DOI: 10.1002/OA.2575.