Pests in ancient Egypt: extermination and remedies, insects, rodents, birds
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VerminThe ancient Egyptians were plagued by all sorts of parasites and vermin, of which the Bible mentions a few (just an aside: J.D.Blaidell in his The curse of the pharaohs sees the ten plagues as symptoms of an anthrax epidemic, others connect them with the explosion of the volcano on Santorini.)6 ... and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt.According to an inscription in Menna's tomb the plight of the peasants was even worse than we would have expected: snakes were thought to destroy harvests as well, a curious mistake to make by people who lived cheek by jowl with a number of different snake species. The snake has seized half the grain, and the hippopotami have eaten the rest. Mice abound in the fields, the locusts descend and the herds devour; the sparrows steal – woe to the farmers! The remains on the threshing floor are for the thieves. Insects
Many insects tormented the ancient Egyptians: flies, lice, fleas [6], and worst of all, mosquitoes and locusts. While the blood sucking ectoparasites were mostly just a nuisance in their eyes, a locust swarm might mean famine. There was little one could do about such a plague, apart from praying to the gods, such as the fertility god Min, protector of crops, or Isis as guardian of life.
Their livelihood was also threatened by weevils and grain beetles which destroyed stored corn [3][2]. Mosquitoes and gnats were trying during the times when water stagnated in the irrigation canals and basins. The reed-cutter travels to the Delta to get arrows; when he has done more than his arms can do, mosquitoes have slain him, gnats have slaughtered him, he is quite worn out.Fresh ben oil was considered efficient against them or the use of a net: Against the gnats, which are very abundant, they have contrived as follows:--those who dwell above the fen-land are helped by the towers, to which they ascend when they go to rest; for the gnats by reason of the winds are not able to fly up high: but those who dwell in the fen-land have contrived another way instead of the towers, and this it is: --every man of them has got a casting net, with which by day he catches fish, but in the night he uses it for this purpose, that is to say he puts the casting-net round about the bed in which he sleeps, and then creeps in under it and goes to sleep: and the gnats, if he sleeps rolled up in a garment or a linen sheet, bite through these, but through the net they do not even attempt to bite. The priests shave themselves all over their body every other day, so that no lice or any other foul thing may come to be upon them when they minister to the gods; 
Bed-bugs are first mentioned in a 2nd millennium papyrus. Eva Panagiotakopulu of Sheffield University discovered some when excavating garbage dumps at a workmen's village at el Amarna. [1] Fleas carrying the plague bacillus were also among the parasites she found. The paleoentomologist
surmises that the plague epidemics originated in Egypt where the Nile rat, immune to the plague after evolving together with the disease, was the natural host of the flea. Black rats, which came into contact with Nile rats in the insanitary cities spread the flea, and with it the plague, throughout much of the ancient world. [5]
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Birds
Even songbirds could develop into pests. Magpies and orioles, generally useful insectivores, love fruit as well and descended upon the carefully tended trees in the gardens, when the fruit began to ripen. The sparrow, a gregarious seed-eater descending on the cornfields when the grain was ripening, was common and its hieroglyph,  , was used as a determinative not just for "common" and "small", but also for "bad".
Getting rid of birds was labour-intensive. Nets were spread over the trees, held up by poles, so the birds could fly underneath and settle in the trees. After removing the poles the birds, unable to fly off, were easily caught. Throwing stones was also effective, provided the thrower's aim was good. In the picture on the left a boy is protecting ripe pomegranates with a sling, while a grown-up is harvesting them. |
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RodentsMice and rats caused a great deal of damage. Apart from being carriers of diseases, they broke into the vital grain stores and spoiled their contents. Remains of walls of houses, built of unburned mud bricks which rodents could gnaw through, often show the attempts of their human inhabitants at plugging rat holes with stones. Rodents were hunted with cats and ferrets and seemingly also captured in traps.In the following text rats are apparently connected with Sekhmet, goddess of pestilences. One should be wary to read too much into such snippets. The Egyptians had no idea what brought about epidemics such as the plague. Their thinking was to a large extent magical: 1st month of peret, day 12: Inauspicious! Inauspicious! Inauspicious! You should not see any rat on this day. You should not go near it in your house. This day, on which one wards off all matters of Sakhmet on this day.But occasionally - at least in literature - even vermin was useful, as Shebitku (Sethos according to Herodotus) learned when the Assyrians under Sanherib attacked Egypt and the Egyptian warriors refused to follow him ... there swarmed by night upon their enemies mice of the fields, and ate up their quivers and their bows, and moreover the handles of their shields, so that on the next day they fled, and being without defence of arms, great numbers fell. RemediesThe Ebers Papyrus mentions a few remedies against a number of pests. While some of them are ostensibly effective, others seem to be based on magical thinking.
who creates that on which the mosquito lives, Picture sources: [ ] Locust: Olam Hatanakh - Shmot [ ] Bedbug: Eva Panagiotakopulu Footnotes: [3] As insects are less active at lower temperatures, grain stores were at times sub-terranean [4]. Researchers from Bar Ilan University excavating a Bronze Age granary in Israel found the body of a beetle of the Rhyzopetha dominica species, a Lesser Grain Borer. This beetle with its high fecundity posed a major threat to grain stores. The pest could be controlled by adding sand to the grain, which scratched the beetle's shell and caused the insect to die from dehydration, a method still practiced by various African tribes. The researchers also propose, that a Bible passage suggests that by not mixing grain from various locations but storing it locally, prevented the spread of the beetle: And he (i.e. Joseph) gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities: the food of the field which was round about every city, laid he up in the same.The researchers may have overinterpreted the passage: transportation to central storage points would not just have been difficult, but above all superfluous.[8] Dr. Panagiotakopulu considers an annual 10 to 12% wastage of stored grain to be a reasonable estimate of the losses incurred through insects, rodents, and other factors. |
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 | [1] Cimex lectularius L., the common bed bug from Pharaonic Egypt by Eva Panagiotakopulu & Paul C. Buckland | |
| [2] Insect Remains from Pharaonic Amarna by Eva Panagiotakopulu | |
| [4] Thermal control of insects and mites by W.E. Muir and P.G. Fields | |
| [5] Fossilized plague in Egypt | |
| [6] Fleas | |
| [7] Prewitt/Allen Archaeological Museum: Locust amulet | |
| [8] Ancient grain borer reveals biblical pest control | |
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