The archaeological site of Tel Megiddo, a hill in Israel located about 80 kilometers from Jerusalem, is what remains of an important city located in a strategic place on the path followed by the armies of Egypt on their way to Syria, Mesopotamia and Anatolia. . In the Bronze Age, the site was a prominent Canaanite city-state, the ancient West Asian civilization that dominated the lands between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
Around 3,500 years ago, two brothers died young at Tel Meggido. They belonged to the local elite and their lives were marked by illness. Both suffered serious injuries to their bones, but their wealth and status allowed them to survive for several years.
Archaeologists from Brown University have examined the remains of the two individuals, discovered during excavations in 2016, and say they both underwent extreme treatments, including brain surgery in which pieces of bone were removed from their skulls. as explained in an article published in the journal PLOS ONE.
The brothers were buried under a luxury residence in the city. His tomb, which contained high-quality food remains and fine pottery inside, dates to the Late Bronze Age, between 1550 and 1450 BC. Recent DNA tests have confirmed their parentage.
The lesions on their bones are evidence of chronic and debilitating infectious conditions, a condition they shared. One of the subjects also had a square hole of about 30 millimeters in the skull. This unusual intervention was to remove a piece of bone, a procedure known as trephination and has historically been used to treat various disorders by relieving pressure on the head.
The surgery—typically performed on people who had epilepsy, scurvy, frontal sinusitis, intracranial disorders, or hydrocephalus—was likely intended to treat the patient's ailment, but the lack of healing in the frontal bone suggests the individual died during or soon after the operation, the researchers say.
"Among the many findings of the study, we wish to highlight the special type of cranial trephination, the first of its kind in the region. This rare procedure was performed on an elite individual with developmental abnormalities and infectious diseases, which brings us to to postulate that this operation may have been an intervention that deteriorated his health”, the experts affirm.
Only four other cases of trephination are known in the Mediterranean Levant and all of them were practiced on men during the Iron Age (between 1200 and 550 BC), one in Timna and the other three in Lachish. Their remains indicate that they survived the postoperative period.
