Crime and Punishment in Ancient Surgery: An Examination of Assyrian and Egyptian Physicians

The history of surgery is a fascinating collection of knowledge from various civilizations dating back up to four thousand years. Some of the oldest writings on surgery and surgeons’ duties date back to the Hammurabi code and Egyptian papyri. The role of the surgeon, particularly, has always had a somewhat peculiar distinction from that of other physicians. In reality, the physician sphere rarely interacted or overlapped with the surgeon sphere of practice, and responsibilities and rewards assigned to the two groups were frequently completely different. We sought to examine and compare the scope of practice, risks, rewards, and punishments of surgeons in Ancient Assyria and Ancient Egyptian times.

Ancient Assyria: The Surgeon’s Role

In 1849, Lord Austin Henry Layard excavated the vast majority of the clay tablets that we now associate with Assyrian times. This movement to preserve Assyrian medical texts occurred approximately four thousand years after their original creation. One can appreciate thousands of tablets and approximately 800 complete medical texts attributable to the Assyrian and Babylonian civilizations from Lord Layard’s work. Read more>>>>>>>>>>