On an ancient Egyptian method of diagnosing pregnancy and determining foetal sex.

THE recognition of pregnancy must have always exerted the acumen of physicians, not only on medical grounds, but for a host of social, legal, and political motives. These motives were certainly of paramount importance in such a highly organized society as Pharaonic Egypt, where wedding contracts with previously married women testify to that interest' (Jonckheere, I954). Moreover, in feudal or monarchical societies where fierce struggles could at any time arise over royal successions, the political necessity of securing a male heir must have been a constant cause of concern among the ruling classes. Ever since the diagnosis ofpregnancy by biological tests was put on scientific bases by Aschheim and Zondek2 in I929, interest has reawakened in some diagnostic methods described in the Kahoun medical papyrus,3 the Berlin papyrus no. 3038,4 and the Carlsberg papyrus.5 These manuscripts were written about three thousand years ago, but they are only copies from originals, probably about fifteen hundred years older. The methods therein described were copied by the Greeks, some by no less an authority than Hippocrates ('Aphorisms', and 'On Sterile Women'), and handed over by them to the Arabs, and through these to medieval Europe. The routes which these survivals followed were studied by Iversen,5 Dawson,6 and Ebers.7 According to Kazancigil8, they are still being practised today in some parts of Asia Minor. The principles on which these tests are built vary, but those that have recently attracted attention, owing to the possibility of their having originated from accurate scientific observation, claim that by watering different cereals with the urine of pregnant women, the kind of cereal that grows best indicates the sex of the expected child, while if none grows, the women must be judged nonpregnant or sterile. (Berlin Papyrus, vs., 2, 2-5 and Carlsberg Papyrus, m, I,6-x+3.) This is the actual text of the Berlin Papyrus as translated into English by Dawson:6