A false toe will not stir the passions. Like a wooden leg or a glass eye, it鈥檚 more likely to excite mirth than admiration. It might prompt curiosity, but hardly serious intellectual attention. Unless, of course, it鈥檚 3000 years old and was once attached to the foot of some long-forgotten but high-ranking Egyptian.
A toe like that might be worthy of a place in a museum. And that is what it鈥檚 got. Made of linen and glue, the big toe is displayed alongside the jewels and the finery of the Pharaonic elite in the British Museum. If visitors notice the toe at all, they smile then turn their attention to the more celebrated artefacts in nearby showcases. To some Egyptologists, though, it is a thing of rare value-one of the world鈥檚 oldest functional prostheses.
THE Reverend Greville Chester was what the British Museum used to call a 鈥渟cout鈥�. His travels took him to archaeological sites in Egypt where he would acquire objects on behalf of the museum. Chester picked up antiquities of all kinds. One batch he sold to the museum in 1881 included an item listed as a 鈥渓eather artificial toe for the right foot, nail wanting, from a mummy. 5in. From Thebes.鈥�
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The original owner of the toe is, sadly, unknown. Chester provided no details of the mummy from which it had been removed. But as mummification was not for the hoi polloi, it鈥檚 safe to assume the toe was once attached to a member of the ruling class.
More than a hundred years passed before anyone studied this odd acquisition in detail. When they did, it turned out to be made not of leather but of cartonnage, a material made of stiffened pieces of cloth. The Egyptians made cartonnage by soaking a piece of linen in glue, then placing it over a core-an object in the shape you were aiming to mould. They added layer after layer until there were perhaps 10 or 15, left the structure to dry out and then lifted it off. Cartonnage is light, durable and very cheap. Egyptians used it for making jars, masks and even coffins.
The toe is mounted on a curving triangular flap that was clearly designed to attach it to the foot. Both edges of the flap have a row of holes, possibly for stitching it to a sandal of the kind which many Egyptians wore, or perhaps for lacing it around the foot itself. The holes are now partially blocked by a layer of smooth reddish-brown material which covers the outer surfaces of the toe and its flap. This was probably applied for cosmetic reasons when its owner was being prepared for mummification.
Archaeologists have unearthed only two other artificial toes from this period. One, described recently by German researchers, was found with the mummy of its owner, a woman who was about 55 years old when she died. It too came from Thebes, but is made of wood. This one is in two parts-the shapely toe, decorated with a carved toenail, was joined by leather thongs to a wooden socket which fitted around the side of the foot and was itself lashed on with string. The third toe, now in the US, is still attached to its mummy and under wraps, only visible with the aid of a CT scan.
Was the toe in the British Museum anything more than decorative-a means of ensuring that the body of the unknown Egyptian would pass complete and unblemished into the next world? Almost certainly. Scratch marks on its base suggest that its owner wore it in life as well as death. It鈥檚 a matter of debate how helpful it would have been as a functional prosthesis. As replacement parts go, a toe isn鈥檛 in quite the same league as a leg, but big toes do bear a substantial part of the weight during walking. People who have lost one tend to run with a limp and are less stable when standing still. An artificial toe, bound tightly to the foot, could have been sufficiently firm but flexible to make a difference.
We will never know how the mystery Egyptian came to lose a toe. Maybe it was through disease, or an accident. An encounter with a crocodile, perhaps? The most intriguing possibility is that the toe was surgically amputated. The Theban woman with the wooden toe suffered from arteriosclerosis. This degenerative thickening of the artery walls can lead to heart attacks, stroke and gangrene in any peripheral parts of the body which don鈥檛 receive an adequate supply of blood. Fingers and toes sometimes drop off naturally, but in this case the German researchers believe their woman鈥檚 toe was lopped off by the local sawbones.
It鈥檚 unclear how much use the ancient Egyptians made of surgery. They certainly practised other kinds of medicine. Papyrus records provide ample evidence for the use of medicines, mainly made from plants. Occasionally they removed abscesses and even a few superficial tumours. But there is no record of any more ambitious use of the knife. Possibly surgery was regarded as a craft, with the skills being handed down from father to son. But if much surgery was being done, why was nothing written about it? This suggests it was rare.
The physical evidence offers few clues. Some skulls have had pieces of bone removed, which suggests the Egyptians might have practised trepanation. But there are no other signs of surgery on any mummy. Dental problems were common, with the jaws of some skulls showing signs of abscesses. But whether bad teeth were extracted is, again, uncertain. Archaeologists have never discovered any instruments that might be used for this or any other surgical purpose.
It鈥檚 hard to imagine that a lack of technical skill held the Egyptians back. After all, these are the people who built the pyramids. A more plausible explanation is that surgery was seen as violating their taboo about invading the body. Even the execution of criminals was not taken lightly.
The source of their views on the sanctity of the body is obscure, and not referred to specifically in their own writings. But this nervousness about bodily violation seems to have extended even beyond death. The first step in the process of mummifying a body was to remove the internal organs. By tradition, the man who made the first cut was ritually chased from the embalming room and even stoned by his colleagues.
The effort that the Egyptians put into preparing the body to make it suitable for the afterlife is an indication of its importance to them.
Whether this has any bearing on their attitude towards surgery on the living is a moot point. The big toe sitting in its showcase in the British Museum is a teasing reminder of how little we know.