Amid a surge of archaeological discoveries taking place in Egypt recently, the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced the discovery of what is believed to be the world’s oldest-known case of breast cancer in the 4,200-year-old skeleton of an adult woman.
The bones of the woman, believed to be an aristocrat from the 6 th Pharaonic Dynasty dating back to 2200 BC, showed “extraordinary deterioration,” Antiquities Minister Mamdouh El Damaty said in a statement on Tuesday.
"The study of her remains shows the typical destructive damage provoked by the extension of a breast cancer as a metastasis."
Unearthed by a Spanish research team based at the University of Jaen and led by the University of Granada headed by Miguel Botella, the remains of the skeleton were discovered in the necropolis of Qubbet El-Hawa, west of the city of Aswan in southern Egypt.
A year ago, a similar discovery was made by a team of British researchers who found traces of metastatic cancer in a 3,000-year-old skeleton unearthed from a tomb in modern day Sudan.
Together, the two discoveries show strong evidence that suggests an occurrence of cancer around the Nile Valley. This also weakens the prevailing assumption that cancer is a modern disease which rose as the average life expectancy increased.
Meanwhile, researchers at the Durham University have been running extensive scans on fully kept skeletons, and not just skulls, in an attempt to follow the history of cancer.
"Very little is known about the antiquity, epidemiology and evolution of cancer in past human populations," the Durham University researchers wrote. "Nevertheless, ancient medical documents indicate pathological conditions, tentatively identified as cancer, were known both to the Ancient Egyptians and Greeks."