Priestly Mummies Had Hardened Arteries

(Feb. 26) -- Being a priest in ancient Egypt had its benefits, but it didn't protect you from what today is widely considered a strictly modern disease: blocked arteries.

One of the duties a priest was expected to perform three times a day was to present the gods with a lavish banquet. The offerings were high in saturated fat: goose meat, beef, cakes made with animal fat, and bread loaded with fat and eggs. The priests also offered up large quantities of alcohol.

After the rituals, the priests and other temple personnel were rewarded by dividing up the food and taking it home with them. According to temple inscriptions, some "unscrupulous priests" even took the food home without first offering it to the gods.

As a result, British researchers say, priests and their families were particularly prone to developing atherosclerosis, according to a paper published in The Lancet, a leading British medical journal.

From hieroglyphic inscriptions on temple walls, the researchers were able to determine what high-fat foods the priestly caste ate. By contrast, ordinary Egyptians were more likely to consume a mainly vegetarian diet.

The study drew on an examination of 22 mummies of priestly Egyptians undertaken last year by American cardiologists Michael I. Miyamoto and Gregory Thomas. They found that of the 16 whose hearts and arteries could be identified by CAT scans, nine had hardened arteries. Information identifying the mummies' social status, plus names and titles, was obtained from inscriptions on their coffins.

The food the priests and their families ate, the journal says, provided more than 50 percent of energy from fat, compared with today's recommendations of no more than 20 to 30 percent.

Goose meat is 63 percent fat, with 20 percent of it saturated. The priests' bread was enriched with fatty ingredients, and their use of salt as a preservative was high.

"There couldn't have been a more evocative message: live like a god and you will pay with your health," an Egyptologist at Manchester University, professor Rosalie David, told the BBC.

Another co-author, professor Tony Heagerty of the university's Cardiovascular Research Group, added, "There is unequivocal evidence to show that atherosclerosis is a disease of ancient times, induced by diet, and that the epidemic of atherosclerosis which began in the 20th century is nothing more than history revisiting us."