You might think that ancient Egypt has nothing to do with neuroscience but you would be wrong. When ancient Egyptians practiced mummification, the brain was usually liquefied and pulled out from the cranium through the nose using a hook-like tool—a method known as excerebration. You do this by making a hole in the back of the neck and withdraw it through the foramen, which is the opening at the bottom of the skull where the spinal cord exits the cranium. [1]

Interestingly, the Greek writer Herodotus described this process of removing the brain in the 5th century BC. He writes, “ Since the brain was not perceived as important as the heart, it was deemed useless for the afterlife, and so it was disposed of. But in some cases, the brain was not removed and it was simply left in the skull. [2]

Copies of hooks or cranial crochets used to remove the brain from the skull. (Image: Science Museum, London, A634908 Pt1).

Even though the brain was not considered of high importance, it was the Egyptians who first described the cerebral cortex. The first ever written description of the human brain was found in the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus written around 1700 BC, which is a copy of a much older text dating around the 30th century BC.[4]

This papyrus describes various cases of patients and their illnesses. In one of the cases, a patient had a hole in the head and the brain was left exposed. The author writes how he saw “corrugations” like the ones in molten copper. These “corrugations” are the first known written description of the cerebral cortex, which has grooves and gives the brain its characteristically wrinkly appearance. Notably, the author also writes about the cerebrospinal fluid, aphasia—an injury related to impairment of language—and he even describes seizures as “he shudders exceedingly”. [4]

“Corrugations” of the cerebral cortex. (Image: Author’s own photo)

Although the author may not have been fully aware of the importance of the brain, this papyrus is meaningful because of its rational descriptions at a time when most medical writings were filled with mysticism and magic. At the same time, it represents the beginnings of the amazing journey to discover the workings of the human brain, which has now flourished into modern-day neuroscience.

References:

1. Fanous, A.A. and W.T. Couldwell, Transnasal excerebration surgery in ancient Egypt: Historical vignette. Journal of neurosurgery, 2012. 116(4): p. 743-748.
2. Lamb, D.S., Mummification, Especially of the Brain. American Anthropologist, 1901. 3(2): p. 294-307.
3. Godley, A.D., Herodotus, the histories. 1920, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
4. Gross, C.G., From imhotep to hubel and wiesel, in Extrastriate Cortex in Primates. 1997, Springer. p. 1-58.

A wombat waddling along (Image: © Jack Ashby)

With pudgy little legs and a determined waddle, wombats are amongst Australia’s cutest marsupials. I mean, have you ever seen a wombatlet (not the technical term, unfortunately) sneeze? There’s lots to love about wombats—including their cube-shaped poop.

Wombat faeces—not a snack treat (Image: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen)

This odd wombat feature has sparked a lot of gleeful speculation. The prevailing thought is that these six-sided excrements are caused by a combination of the digestion time, the shape of the large intestine, and the dryness of the resulting fecal matter.

Wombats have a slow digestive system—it takes up to 2.5 weeks for food eaten to make its way down the alimentary canal, through the stomach, small intestine, and finally out the anus as fecal matter. (On the scale of animal defecation time, wombats aren’t even in the running. One snake was recorded as “holding it” for 420 days.)

A common wombat, or Vombatus ursinus, skull with large teeth for masticating grasses and roots, and a skeleton with large front claws for digging (Images: Grant Museum of Zoology, Z68 and Z67)

After being processed by the stomach, the digested matter transverses the large intestine, which is a long tube-like organ with ridged sides. These ridges may help to break the matter into compact sections. Since the final part of the intestine is much smoother, these cubed sections retain their shape all the way to the anus.

A wombat’s long digestive time means that this matter becomes condensed and, ultimately, dry as the nutrients are extracted. Wombats have some of the driest faeces amongst mammals and, it turns out, it’s a handy evolutionary trait. Wombats use their droppings to mark territory; with a propensity to defecate on logs and other elevated objects, cubes won’t roll off, unlike cylindrical droppings. As wombats drop between 80 and 100 scats a day, it would be a pain if they, well, scattered.

One downside of a backwards-facing pouch is sometimes baby #wombats (wombatlets) end up with a face full of poo.#WombatWednesday #wildoz pic.twitter.com/xBjNF1WizS

— Jack Ashby (@JackDAshby) November 30, 2016

According to Jack Ashby, Manager of the Grant Museum of Zoology, “Another thing to note about wombat poo is that since wombats have backwards-facing pouches, larger wombatlets end up spending a lot of time with their faces in poo. It has been suggested that this is an important way that they gain helpful gut bacteria that they need to digest the wombat diet of tough Australian grasses.”

If you want to see fake wombat faeces in action, Robyn Lawrence created a video demonstrating a wombat’s digestive system. She uses Jell-O to illustrate the forming and squeezing of the food into cube shapes, which then passes unchanged through the colon and out the fake anus.

So no, the wombat rectum isn’t square.

———

Further Reading:

Menkhorst, P. A Field Guide to the Mammals of Australia. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Triggs, Barbara. The Wombat: Common Wombats in Australia. University of New South Wales Press, 2002.

During a recent shift at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, I was asked by one visitor, ‘what’s your favourite object in the museum?’. As anyone who has visited the Petrie Museum will know, there is no shortage of fascinating objects on display, from the museum’s 12^th dynasty pottery rat-trap, to the amazing Hawara mummy portraits (naming but two of my go-to favourites when showing visitors around the collection). However, the object I find most interesting within the museum’s collection is a small artefact found in one of the cabinets in the museum’s pottery room, in and amongst a group of objects dating from the Ottoman period (1517 – 1914 CE). The object is identified on its label as ‘UC4108 Wooden astrolabe with brass dial. Probably made for teaching purposes rather than use’. From the moment I first spotted the object I was intrigued. What exactly is an astrolabe, and how would it have been used?

Wooden Astrolabe (UC4108), displayed with its handwritten museum label (Image credit: Hannah Wills)

The Petrie Museum’s astrolabe (UC4108), displayed with a group of objects from the Ottoman Period (Image credit: Hannah Wills)

What is an astrolabe?

An astrolabe is a kind of scientific instrument, used to calculate the time and to make observations, such as the height of the Sun and stars with respect to the horizon or meridian.[i] In the Islamic world, astrolabes served an important function in determining prayer times, and the direction of Mecca.[ii] Such instruments date back to ancient times and were used to reveal how the sky looks from a specific place at a specific time. The face of the astrolabe features a map of the sky, with the celestial sphere mapped onto a flat surface. The instrument features moveable parts that allow the user to set date and time. When this is done, the face of the instrument represents the sky, allowing the user to solve astronomical problems visually.[iii]

Teaching astronomy 

Though many astrolabes used in the medieval period were made from either brass or iron, the Petrie Museum’s astrolabe is made from wood, with a brass dial, known as the ‘rete’ (in Arabic al-‘ankabūt), affixed to the top.[iv] The museum’s catalogue suggests that the object is ‘too crudely made for any practical purpose other than teaching’.[v] Historian Johannes Thomann notes that in the Islamic world from around the mid-eighth century onwards, the main function of the astrolabe was as a tool for teaching introductory astronomy, supported by texts written in an instructional style that explained the use of key astronomical instruments.[vi] The ‘crude’ finish of the Petrie Museum astrolabe, along with its size, would have made it imprecise, and ultimately unfit for carrying out practical calculations. The instrument might instead have been used for basic exercises to familiarise pupils with astronomy, and the process of making observations.

To find out more about how astrolabes work, you can watch this short TED talk, “Tom Wujec Demos the 13th-Century Astrolabe.” New York: TED, 2009.

Do you have a favourite object in any of the UCL museums? Tweet us @ResearchEngager or find us in the museums and tell us about it!

References:

[i] ‘Astrolabe’,  in Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/science/astrolabe-instrument [Accessed 8 Feb 2018].

[ii] Unit 4: Science and the Art of the Islamic World, in Maryam D. Ekhtiar and Claire Moore, Art of the Islamic World: A Resource for Educators, https://www.metmuseum.org/learn/educators/curriculum-resources/art-of-the-islamic-world [Accessed 8 Feb 2018], p. 94.

[iii] ‘The Astrolabe: An Instrument with a Past and Future’, http://www.astrolabes.org/ [Accessed 8 Feb 2018].

[iv] Sonja Brentjes and Robert G. Morrison ‘The Sciences in Islamic societies (750-1800)’, in Robert Irwin, ed. The New Cambridge History of Islam. Vol. 4. The New Cambridge History of Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 596.

[v] UC4108 Wooden Astrolabe, Petrie Museum Online Catalogue, http://petriecat.museums.ucl.ac.uk/detail.aspx [Accessed 8 Feb 2018].

[vi] ‘Interviews with the Experts’, Charles Burnett interview with Johannes Thomann, Astrolabes in Medieval Jewish Culture, 5 March 2014, http://blogs.mhs.ox.ac.uk/hebrew-astrolabes/2014/03/05/interviews-experts/ [Accessed 8 Feb 2018].

This month it’s LGBTQ History Month, a month to celebrate and remember LGBTQ icons and heroes. The month is a vital event that reminds us LGBTQ people exist, have always existed, and should be celebrated. So, for this week’s blog post (which is, fortuitously, my responsibility) I would like to talk about an important figure from the history of both UCL and the LGBTQ community.

Amelia Edwards was a novelist, a philanthropist, an adventurer and an all-round remarkable woman. She wrote her first story at just 12 and went to write ghost stories and best-selling tales of bigamy. She also wrote about her exciting travels across the world in publicly acclaimed and hand-illustrated books. It was on one of these travels that she became committed to protecting the history and ancient artefacts of Egypt.

This bust of Amelia Edwards can be found in the Petrie Museum

Inspired by her trip down the Nile and appalled by the ransacking and destruction of Egyptian monuments and historical sites, Edwards founded the Egyptian Exploratory Fund in 1882. Through this organisation she funded many of Flinders Petrie’s digs and amassed a great collection of antiquities which she donated to UCL upon her death. It is thanks to her that UCL boasts such a large collection of important museum objects.

But, it is not just Edwards’ work that makes her so remarkable. She was also a lesbian at a time when it was thought that those kinds of women just did not exist. Of all the things that make Amelia Edwards so inspirational, I think the fact that she openly travelled and, then lived, with her partner Ellen Drew Braysher during the 19th century is certainly high on the list.

Edwards died in April of 1892, just a few months after her partner and they are buried side by side in St Mary’s Church, Henbury (in Bristol). Their graves are now listed sites, recognising them as important figures in this country’s LGBT history. This, perhaps, goes part way to rectify the designation of Braysher as Edwards’ “beloved friend” as stated on her gravestone.

In her lifetime, it was likely that the nature of Edwards and Braysher’s relationship was not acknowledged or accepted by many. Indeed, even now, when reading about Edwards’ life, Braysher is more frequently referred to as a companion, or friend, and not as a partner, a lover, or a girlfriend. I was excited to discover that Amelia Edwards shared her life with a woman, as I always am to find other lesbians, and so feel particularly enthused to discuss her legacy and her life with visitors of the Petrie Museum as I want her relationship to be recognised and remembered for what it actually was. You can read more about Amelia Edwards’ life here in a blog post written by Dr Alice Stevenson for International Women’s Day.