Part 2: In Kasr El-Einy among the Medics and the Mummies

By Joann Fletcher

Following Cromer’s conclusions, Harrison had little choice but to leave Egypt and present his own case to Lansdowne in London. Leaving the six at Kasr el-Einy Hospital, the press reported that “unless their health improves the Government will insist on their being sent back to their native parts. The general opinion is that they should never have been brought away, and great curiosity is expressed as to what is going to be done with them in England” [1] where Lansdowne advised Harrison to abandon his ‘very undesirable’ plans. Yet since the group were not British subjects no laws prevented their visit, Harrison telling the press that any ban “would have been a poor return after the great kindnesses experienced from every Government official in the Soudan [sic] and Egypt” [2]. He also claimed that “some people in utter ignorance of their forest life are writing on the atrocious crime of dragging these people over here. … [but] instead of dragging out a mere existence during the nine months rainy season, half-starved and attacked by all sorts of diseases, my little friends are having the time of their life, good food, clothes, and the best of medical advice, visiting a country whose climate I believe will suit them splendidly already each nearly a stone heavier” [3].

Benefitting from ongoing medical care in Egypt, Dr. Goodman’s Australian colleague Prof. (later Sir) Grafton Elliot Smith now became involved, noting that “during their sojourn of the greater part of a month in Cairo the party of six pygmies brought by Colonel Harrison from the Ituri Forest in the Congo Free State lived in the School of Medicine and the adjoining Kasr-el-Aini Hospital… I have had ample opportunities for examining them and studying their behaviour” [4].

Smith had come to Cairo as the medical school’s first anatomy professor in 1900, at a time construction of the Aswan Low Dam had started to uncover ancient burial sites. With their contents sent north to Cairo Museum, its director (later sir) Gaston Maspero asked Smith to study them, and he was soon “inundated by mummified human remains” [5] which Maspero sent to his lab. He also invited Smith to examine mummies found in the Valley of the Kings, including pharaoh Tuthmosis IV whose tomb had been discovered in the valley in 1903 by Theodore Davis and his archaeologist Howard Carter. Both Davis and Carter, plus Lord and Lady Cromer, had attended the king’s ceremonial ‘unwrapping’ at Cairo Museum where Smith performed his initial examination, but needing to pinpoint the king’s age he required X-rays (‘skiagrams’). As a technique discovered only 8 years earlier, "the only X-ray apparatus then in Egypt” [6] was located in a nursing home, to which Smith transported the mummified monarch in the back of a horse-drawn cab, assisted by Carter and the ‘excellent radiologist’ Dr. Khayat Bey.

Having pioneered this form of examination for the pharaohs of Egypt, Smith then used it to examine Harrison’s group as part of their only known published medical study. Noting that “With the full consent of Colonel Harrison I have made a large series of measurements” [7], Smith was able to estimate the group’s ages “by evidence afforded by the state of their teeth and bones” [8], again at considerable variance with those given by Harrison, and greatly helped by the fact that “Dr. Khayatt [sic] made skiagrams [X-rays] of the hands and wrists of the whole party” [8].

 Smith also added that “It had been our intention during the last few days of the pygmies’ stay in Cairo to submit all parts of the skeletons (of all of them) to examination by the Roentgen rays”, but this was not possible given “interruptions caused by their treatment for ankylostomiasis” [8]. Caused by hookworms in their intestines, Smith’s colleague Arthur Looss, professor of parasitology, also discovered flatworm eggs responsible for schistosomiasis (‘Egyptian bilharzia’), likely responsible for the previously reported anaemia, coughing and abdominal swelling, immediate treatment for which gave ‘very satisfactory’ results [9].

Yet Smith’s plans for full X-rays of the six were ultimately curtailed by “their sudden departure two days before it was expected” [8]. Once cleared for their voyage to Britain, the group arrived on 1st June 1905 and 4 days later made their first appearance at the London Hippodrome.

About the Author

Professor Joann Fletcher is based in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. She is also Lead Ambassador for the Egypt Exploration Society, patron of Barnsley Museums and Heritage Trust, and has been researching aspects of Scarborough Museums’ collection for over 20 years.

References

1. Pall Mall Gazette, report compiled 22.4.05 and published 28.4.05, in Green 1998, p.119

2. Harrison in Beverley Guardian 29.4.05 in Green 1998, p.119

3. Harrison 1905, p.24

4. Smith, G.E. 1905, Notes on African Pygmies, with a Note on Intestinal Worms found in African Pygmies by Dr. A. Looss, Professor of Parasitology, the School of Medicine, Cairo, The Lancet 166 (4276), p.425.

5. Crook, P. 2012, Grafton Elliot Smith, Egyptology and the diffusion of culture: a biographical perspective, Eastbourne, p.7, adding Maspero “transferred forty-four mummies from the museum to the medical school laboratory” p.9; this soon developed into an anatomy museum where the author worked Jan-Feb 1997, see also Saleem 2021, p.110-111

6. Smith, G.E. 1935, Letters, The Times, 6.3.35; Dawson, W.R. ed. 1938, Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, London, p.38-39

7. Smith 1905, p.425, his study likely rendering obsolete the “in-depth study at the Royal Anthropological Institute by Sir Harry Johnston… intended for publication” and completed in September 1905 but “yet to be found”, according to Middleton, J. 2021, The Harrison Collection: Addressing colonialism in the collections of a Victorian big game hunter, Journal of Natural Science Collections 9, p.33.

8. Smith 1905 p.427, adding “For the excellent series of skiagrams used in this investigation I am indebted to Dr. Khayatt [sic]”.

9. Looss in Smith 1905, p.431.