Did the Bubonic Plague Originate in Egypt?

The earliest possible description of the plague that is known of is found in the Hebrew Bible in Samuel. The event has been dated to around the second half of the 11th century B.C. The Hebrew description of tumors in the Bible is interpreted as the 'swelling in the secret parts.' The Philistine city was said to have been stricken with mice which brought death to large segments of the population.

New evidence has been uncovered that leads some experts to believe that the plague's origins may come from Egypt. Eva Panagiotakopulu, who is an archaeologist and fossil-insect expert at the University of Sheffield, England, is the woman responsible for science's latest discovery. Eva has found archaeological evidence to back up the plague's possible origins in Egypt, and that evidence has recently just been published in the Journal of Biogeography.

Eva Panagiotakopulu fell onto evidence that the plague may have started in Egypt completely by accident. Eva had been looking at the remains of fossilized insects to learn about life in Egypt thousands of years ago. Since Egyptians lived so close to domestic animals, and thus pests, Panagiotakopulu decided to look at the different diseases that animals and people may have once had.

Studies were conducted at the location of Amarna, which is where builders of the tombs of Tutankhamun and Akhenaton once dwelled. These studies yielded significants finds. Cat and human fleas were found both inside and outside of these workers' homes. Past excavations along the Nile Delta have uncovered Nile rats that dated to the 16th and 17th century B.C. The main carrier flea of the plague was believed to be a native of the Nile Valley.

The Nile would have been the perfect breeding ground for rats to carry the plague to other areas. Whenever there was a flood, the Nile rat and its fleas were sent elsewhere. It has been postulated that the disease could have spread to the black rats, who then carried the bacteria to other regions. The rats could have easily picked up fleas that were carrying the plague in Egypt and then traveled on board ships that sailed across the Mediterranean to Southern Europe.

Other evidence that the plague may have originated in Egypt is found in Egyptian writings from a similar time frame. A 1500 B.C. medical text that was called the Ebers Papyrus talks about a disease that "has produced a bubo, and the pus has petrified, the disease has hit." Could this be the deadly bubonic plague they're referring to?

Other early references to the plague can be found in the 3rd century B.C. and were documented by Dionysius Curtus, who may have practiced medicine in Alexandria and reported buboes behind the knees, around the elbows and in all of the usual places.

The Plague of Justinian in 541-542 A.D. is the first recorded pandemic and is the first official recording of the bubonic plague. Around 10,000 people were dying in Constantinople on a daily basis, and nearly 40% of this city's inhabitants were wiped out during this epidemic.

To lend more credence to the theory that the plague originated in Egypt, Constantinople used to import large amounts of grain from Egypt to feed the city's people. Is it possible that the grain ships became contaminated while in Egypt, and then carried the deadly disease home with them?

The bacterium that causes the bubonic plague is housed inside the gut of the carrier flea. Inside these fleas, the bacteria multiplies and blocks off the flea's throat-like area, which only makes the fleas even more hungry. When the flea bites either a rat or a human, it spits out some of the bacteria into the bite wound.

Victims who contracted the plague back in this era were considerably worse off than they were during the Great Plague of London, which is saying quite a lot. During this later era of the plague, those who were ill were visited not by qualified physicians, but by plague doctors. These so-called doctors wore bird masks that were stuffed full of aromatic herbs or flowers as some of the theories floating around at the time asserted that those suffering from the plague were ill because they had inhaled bad air. The doctors also wore waxed clothing and carried a large wooden stick to push away their victims, should they get too close. They would assess whether someone was suffering from the plague or not and if they were, there were strict plague orders to be followed where the victims were to be shut up inside of their homes with a large red cross painted outside of their door. The sick were usually left to die on their own.

All of these many years later, we are now finally getting closer to finding out just where the dreaded plague began. Will further evidence back up Egypt as its starting point? Only time will tell.

Sources: Newcastle University, Wikipedia, news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/0310_040310_blackdeath.html