The Fight to Survive in Ancient Egypt: Health Care and Disease at Deir-el-Medina

Anne Austin, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History, is studying the use of human skeletal remains in conjuction with art and texts to understand ancient Egyptian culture. She is currently focusing her research on how health and disease affected the village community of Deir-el-Medina during the New Kingdom Period. Austin led the first detailed study of human remains at the Deir-el-Medina site. She has been fascinated by the many discoveries in her field work, among them that workers in Ancient Egypt received paid sick leave, organized labor strikes and visited a "clinic" for a free checkup. And unlike the Greeks but much like we do today, Ancient Egyptians thought of disease as a kind of contamination of the body. Come discover some surprising commonalities between our societies and Ancient Egypt.