Analysis - How much can the written records of ancient civilisations tell us about the animals they lived alongside? Our latest research, based on the venomous snakes described in an ancient Egyptian papyrus, suggests more than you might think.
, According to Our New Study of a Scroll, based on the venomous snakes described in an ancient Egyptian papyrus, suggests more than you might think. A much more diverse range of snakes than we'd imagined lived in the land of the pharaohs - which also explains why these Egyptian authors were so preoccupied with treating snakebites!
As well as the symptoms of the bite, the papyrus also describes the deity associated with the snake, or whose intervention might save the patient. The bite of the"" , for example, was described as causing rapid death. Readers were also warned that this snake had not the usual two fangs but four, still a rare feature for a snake today.
We found that nine of our ten species could probably once have lived in ancient Egypt. Many could have occupied the southern and southeastern parts of the country as it then was - modern northern Sudan and the Red Sea coast. Others might have lived in the fertile, vegetated Nile valley or along the northern coast. For instance, boomslangs might have lived along the Red Sea coast in places that 4,000 years ago would have been part of Egypt.
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