Unhooded snakes 'had connotations of rebirth - they shed their skin - and thus perfect in a funerary connection,' said Ogden. One of the drawings is a snake that doesn't have a hood, Ogden said, noting that this is commonly seen in Egyptian jewelry. He has conducted an extensive amount of research (including his doctoral thesis) on Egyptian gold jewelry from the period around 2,000 years ago. Live Science reached out to several experts not affiliated with the research to ask what the drawings found incised on the gold sheets might show and mean.įew of the researchers were able to respond at time of publication, but one scholar who did was Jack Ogden, the president of the Society of Jewellery Historians.
'This surgery is the oldest surgical intervention ever known since prehistory but was rare in Egypt,' Zeinab Hashish, a skeletal expert who works for the ministry, said in the statement. (Image credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities) It was believed that it could treat a variety of medical problems. This person may have undergone 'trepanation,' a medical procedure often used in ancient times. The skull of one of the men has a hole that is about 1.7 cm (0.7 inches) in diameter.
