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| Most archaeologists are actually amazed that people fall for this tripe |
I must confess, I have been putting off writing this post for over a year.
Partly out of a desire to get all my ducks in a row, and partly because it has always seemed like the most clickbaity topic I could tackle ...
I mean a condom AND Tutankhamen .... It is almost too much of a cheap shot.
And
last time I discussed ancient Egyptians and their reputed sex toys the
post was quite popular (here), but that is a road I don't wish to be driven
down.
Next thing you know I am competing with Ancient Whoever for the most hyperbolic piece of meaningless fluff involving alien Anunnaki giants.
(Bearing firmly in mind that I do have a post related to that topic lurking around somewhere in my files... shifts awkwardly in chair).
Somebody has to do it, so here we go again.
Pictured below you can witness the moment that I decided to write this blog post:
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| Facebook 24.09.23 |
And then I discovered that it wasn't just coloured condoms, but that articles about the history of prophylactics were claiming that in ancient Egypt condoms were colour coded to indicate social rank...
So if you were pharaoh you wore a different coloured rubber to a noble, a soldier or a farmer......lol lol lol ... being a colour theory type archaeologist I want to know the colour code.... blue for royalty?
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| Khan et al 2013 republished at Brewminate in 2019 |
Tutankhamen
If you've been living under a rock since 1922 you may not be aware of Egypt's favorite pharaoh, Tutankhamen, who was king of Egypt for 9-10 years at the end of the 18th Dynasty (ca. 1334-1324 BCE). He died at about 18 years of age and was buried in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor.
His notoriety is mainly the result of modern associations with the word 'treasure', due to the tomb surviving the ravages of looting more or less intact, with a massive inventory of objects fit for a very rich dead king, which one cannot say of many other Egyptian royal tombs.
Tutankhamen's tomb was carefully examined and documented by an excavation team led by archaeologist Howard Carter over a period of many years.
Don't laugh, but one of the singular advantages to the enquiring mind in this day and age is easy access to reliable information, inclusive of such luxuries as the excavation notes and catalogue of Howard Carter from Tutankhamen's tomb.
These are online at the Griffith Institute, Oxford, Tutankhamen; Anatomy of an Excavation here
In Carter's excavation notes the sheath is listed as no. 079q, which means it was found early during excavation in the main Antechamber of the tomb, in box number 079. The q refers to the numbering of objects from this box.
Achaeological context is important
Howard Carter calls this object a finger-stall in his notes, based on its size and the other objects that it was found with: cloth bandages and pads, rolls of fabric and a sling. There were also gauntlets and loincloths. As a result it was assumed the sheath was a medical halter or finger stall. And that is how it is described in the excavation notes.
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| Carter No: 079q. A linen finger-stall, http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/079q.html |
Problem no. 1. Size is important
I am aware that this might be stating the obvious, but things can look larger in a photograph on the internet.
So there is reason behind Carter's identification: this object is quite small.
It is made of double thickness coarse linen sewn into a sheath, and as a result has a seam along one side. It has tapes attached to a reinforced triangle on the back making the back even more reinforced. These tapes may have been about 50 cm long (19.68 inches), but this is not certain, currently there is only one long string, the other tape is much shorter.
Nonetheless, even if both tapes were originally 50 cm long this is not long enough to tie around the waist of an average built adult man. And remember Tut was 18 when he died, not 11. This means he was either very small or this object wasn't meant to tie around the hip.
And on that topic: Since when do condoms come as strap-ons?
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| (c) Griffith Institute http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/079q.html |
But back to the more important issue: the stall is 5.5 cm (2.16 inches) long.
It is 7 cm (2.75 inches) only if one includes the reinforced tape triangulation on the back where the straps were attached. This triangulation is not relevant to the length of the body part it fitted.
The stall is also thin, being no more than 3 cm wide (1.18 inch).
So whatever was intended to go in this sheath was not more than 5.5 cms long and 6 cm in circumference.... that is a bit less than the size of my thumb.
This stall is also not made of lightweight material, and is designed to tie to something (on one side).
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| Kahun gynaecological papyrus, image Petrie Museum UC 32057. |
With the high infant mortality rate and the need for a regular supply of children to support a family (the Egyptian social ideal), ancient Egyptian medical texts related to family planning were mostly interested in achieving pregnancy, although there are a few recipes intended to prevent this (see Ebers Papyrus spell 783)
In these spells the emphasis is resoundingly placed on the woman in this process. Egyptian medical papyri therefore only contain recipes for women to prevent or cause conception. The onus of baby production in ancient Egypt was on women (Nunn 2006).
These recipes involved ground up pastes that were placed in the vagina, but with no connection necessarily provided to administration before or after sexual intercourse. These recipes could contain ingredients like honey and natron, or crocodile dung and plant pulp (Kahun Papyus spell 21-22, Ramesseum IV).
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| Ancient Origins 2017, from one condom in one tomb to 'some pharaohs' had condoms |
On the other hand, there appears to have been little interest in methods for inhibiting male fertility.
In fact, there is currently no evidence from pharaonic Egypt that men were expected to actively prevent conception, or that condoms were used... nothing. Not one has been found from any tomb or temple or domestic context... If a book or website tells you otherwise they are perpetuating a modern myth.
The earliest legitimate evidence for the use of something resembling a condom in the ancient world is from the Roman era. The earliest evidence of use of a condom that resembles the modern prophylactic is much later, around the 16th century CE (Riddle 1992, Cain 2014, Bullough 2001).
Problem no. 3: Egyptian pharaoh was a model of virility
I am also going to point out the rather obvious flaw:
Why would a king, 'Mighty Bull, the very image of Birth' (Tut's Horus name), need a condom?
Condoms are usually intended to prevent pregnancy, yet pharaohs were the Egyptian embodiment of virility and procreation. It was part of their job to produce heirs with as many wives as was physically allowable in the hope that one child would reach maturity and succeed their father as living god.
And the infant mortality rate in ancient Egypt was dire.
There really is no context where I can imagine an Egyptian king needing a condom in his medicine cabinet. Tutankhamen, for example, left no male heir, and at 18 had already produced still-born offspring who were buried with him. There is also little logic to his needing to take a condom with him into the Afterlife, which was the sole intention of objects buried with a king.
The argument that is sometimes given, that the king of Egypt was trying to prevent exposure to tropical diseases is weak at best, and a porous fabric condom would simply not prevent disease transmission. In addition, he certainly wouldn't need to worry about catching herpes in the Afterlife.
So where has this myth come from?
Tracing the travels of misinformation
There is no scientific evidence to support claims about this linen stall from the tomb of Tutankhamen. The object is small and impractical as a condom, being made of double thickness course linen. The tapes would not tie around an adult male pelvis, but they would easily tie around a wrist, making finger-stall much more likely.
No scientific tests have established that this object was a condom. These claims appear to be fabricated, and then combined with telephone game factoids sourced from a few cheery broad reach books on the history of contraception.
No legitimate Egyptological publication makes these claims...
The source for some of these myths today appears to be the book by historian Aine Collier The Humble Little Condom from 2007 already mentioned above, in which the author devoted some time to quirky anecdotes regarding ancient sexuality and contraception.
Among others, claiming that the ancient Egyptian pharaohs used papyrus condoms to protect themselves from disease, and arguing that the Egyptians probably did not consider these to be contraceptive devices. All I can say is Collier clearly has never dealt with wrapping papyrus sheets around an unusual shape.
In addition, the book has a quite flexible approach to what constitutes a condom, confusing the wearing of penis sheaths, loin cloths and highly starched linen kilts with actual sexual practices.
This problem appears to be rife for this topic, because the confusion of penis sheath and condom is at the source of this factoid.
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| Citation pls |
However,
the most frustrating part about Collier's book, apart from the
breezy writing style, is that there is no referencing of sources. Nonetheless, many websites, some academic papers and social media sites are citing Collier for these myths.
The idea that the ancient Egyptians used coloured condoms for disease prevention and that these were associated with social status has had a healthy life of its own through various books and papers from the 1970s to the 90s, but the myth appears to ultimately stem from a book on contraception by Bernard Finch and Hugh Green, Contraception through the Ages (1963).
These authors again provide no source for their claims and appear to have a book by sociologist Norman Himes, Medical History of Contraception (1936) as their general source in the bibliography, although it is unclear that he ever said this about the Egyptians. Himes appears to only have been discussing penis protectors ('sheaths') as protection from disease or indicators of rank.
Nonetheless 60 years of telephone games later and the ancient Egyptians of the New Kingdom wearing coloured condoms to demonstrate social status is an embedded factoid in social media and in academic papers associated with contraception.
Yet these claims are grounded in early 20th century assumptions about 'primitive' peoples wearing penis sheaths for ceremonial occasions and as symbols of status, these sheaths are then equated with condoms and with sexual practices. The addition of colour appears to be associated with the dyed animal hides used to make these.
The Egyptians were not wearing penis sheaths in the 18th Dynasty (Tutankhamen), or even the Old Kingdom, they were more of a smart-casual fashion item for Egyptian men in the Predynastic, about 2000 years earlier than the New Kingdom. However, the Egyptians of the New Kingdom did sometimes represent their enemies dressed in this way.
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| The contraceptive does not pop up in Egyptian hieroglyphs. |
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| Gallivantrix.com 2019 |
Back to Tutankhamen
On the other hand, none of these publications mention Tutankhamen possessing a condom that was buried lovingly with him in his tomb, nor that DNA had been found in this linen stall.
Instead, the DNA factoid seems to be relatively new, and the outcome of an anecdote told by an Egyptian tour guide to a tourist who blogs as Gallivantrix (in 2015), that provided the source for Ancient Origins (2022), and from there it was downhill all the way.
In addition, an association to Tutankhamen may be traced to a paper on the history of contraception by Lesley Smith (2013) that begins with the claim that the linen stall from the Cairo museum may be a condom and that ancient Egyptians may have used these to prevent disease rather than conception.
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| *facepalm* |
Therefore, you can take statements online about the ancient Egyptians using condoms with a pinch of salt.
There is no evidence the pharaonic Egyptians ever cared about restricting male potency. There is also no evidence of condom use... nothing. The original source of these claims is not Egyptology, it is a book on contraception from 1936, and this was basically suggesting condoms might have evolved from penis protectors. The sources for Tutankhamen's *small* linen stall being a condom are anecdotal.
Trust no-one who doesn't provide sources, and when they do, don't automatically assume that they interpreted it accurately, or that the source is reliable. They could just be sharing a factoid that has been floating around the less scrupulous edges of their own discipline for 60 years.
On that note, if you are an academic, there are three things I need you to do:
- Please read outside your discipline, do it, you will learn stuff.
- Read the latest research and double check the sources, just in case... we are all human.
- Also, please, please check the original research rather than regurgitating secondary interpretations.
Everybody else: Do not trust online clickbait sites, they exist to repeat viral yet attractive misinformation.
And the name Tutankhamen brings all the clickbaiters to the yard.
