Did a dental profession exist in ancient Egypt during the 3RD millennium B.C.?

As Professor Ghalioungui has intimated,' my studies of the dental pathology revealed in collections of ancient Egyptian dry skulls have caused me to reject the current belief that an organized dental profession existed in the time of the Old Kingdom. The arguments I have adduced to support my contention have been set out in a series of articles published during the past few years.2 However, since the publication of Ghalioungui's reappraisal of the subject, I have devoted further study to the philological and other supporting evidence which is quoted by the advocates of the hypothesis that an ethical dental profession did in fact exist. As Ghalioungui so rightly points out, the interpretation of Old Kingdom hieroglyphs is a subject that can be debated only by philologists. Unfortunately there are but few scholars who specialize in Old Kingdom hieroglyphs and these appear to be divided into groups accepting the tenets of one or other of previous scholars. So the scholars who follow the lead of Junker, are prepared to accept his reading of the Old Kingdom hieroglyph of the elephant's tusk as representing a human tooth, and from that continue to agree with him when he avers that the elephant tusk sign joined to the hieroglyph representing the royal household should be understood as indicating the holder of an appointment of dentist to the Pharaoh.' On the other hand, there are philologists of equal eminence, Kaplony et al., who are unable to accept this rendering,4 as on some monuments this title is associated with others which in the context would be inconsistent, and who therefore prefer to translate the symbol of the elephant's tusk as a reference to an office of state. Objects made of elephant ivory were in daily use at that period of Egyptian history and so there must have been dry skeletons of elephants to be examined especially in the southern outposts and the possibility of an observer appreciating the relation of a tusk to a human tooth. Nevertheless, I cannot accept the idea that the ancient Egyptian knowledge of comparative dental anatomy was so highly developed that the people could equate the huge ivory tusk of the Loxodonta africana (measuring as much as 11 ft. long and weighing some 250 lbs.) with a counterpart in the human dentition. Still less is it easy to believe that in the earliest days of ideograms, in spite ofpossible associated phonograms, that the elephant's tusk should be used to represent the human tooth and during the same era to be used as the symbol of a specialized healing profession. It is hoped that by pin-pointing this difference of opinion scholars might be encouraged to devote further study to the problem, and a more firm conclusion be reached. There are two further items of evidence to support the belief in the existence of a dental profession. One arose from the observations made by A. E. Hooton after his examination of an Old Kingdom mandible exhibited in the Peabody Museum at Harvard University.6 This mandible showed two so-called 'borings' from the external part of the alveolar bone to the apices of the first molar. If Hooton had been able to study the dental pathology revealed in the large collections of dry skulls in European