Crocodile of a Migraine? An Egyptian Rx

Did the ancient Egyptians really recommend putting a crocodile on the head to treat migraine? Well, sort of…

Histories of migraine usually start with this crocodile on the head anecdote. But, as Egyptologist Lutz Popko explains it, the story is complicated by a confusion of manuscripts, an ersatz-Egyptian illustration, and the question of what disease the Egyptians were even talking about.

“Migraine” comes from the Greek for “disease of half of the skull.” The Greeks “probably borrowed” the word from an Egyptian medical term meaning “(pain/disease in) half-of-the-head.” Arguing that the contemporary definition of migraine and the ancient Egyptian definition don’t necessarily match each other, Popko sticks with the evocative, but vague, usage of “(pain in) half-of-the-head.”

The crocodile prescription has several variants, typically sourced to the Ebers Papyrus, “the largest and by far most famous (although not the oldest) medical papyrus of ancient Egypt.” The papyrus is dated circa 1550 BCE, with parts of it copied from even earlier texts.

In at least one modern re-telling, the crocodile is real and is wrapped around the head. In most re-tellings, however, the crocodile is made of clay and its mouth stuffed with grain. Popko writes that there’s an “Egyptian-looking depiction” that sometimes accompanies these re-tellings. While amusing, this image is far from ancient: it’s traced to a “certain P. Cunningham without an Egyptian antecedent.” (Popko breaks the fake Egyptian news image down, noting among other things that the ancient Egyptians didn’t have head-mirrors and didn’t carry physicians/midwives’ bags such as the one depicted.)

The Ebers Papyrus, also known as Papyrus Ebers, is named after German professor Georg Ebers, who purchased it in 1873 in Luxor. It’s now in the collection of the University Library of Leipzig. It was damaged during World War II, but a pre-war facsimile preserves the content of the destroyed sections. The co-author of a book on the manuscript, Popko writes that nowhere does it recommend the crocodile treatment. Instead, the manuscript recommends applying a catfish head/skull annealed in fat or another oil to the “(pain in) half-of-the-head” sufferer’s head for four days.

The clay crocodile actually comes from another ancient Egyptian medical manuscript, Papyrus Chester Beatty V. Now in the British Museum, Chester Beatty V is dated to the Ninth Dynasty, circa 1292–1190 BCE, several hundred years later than the Ebers. Here the treatment does include a clay crocodile figurine with faience eyes and a mouth full of grain. Additionally, a linen strip with an image of “Re, Atum, Shu, Mehyt, Geb, Nut, Anubis, Horus, Seith, Isis, Nephthys,” and possibly Horus, is attached to the sufferer’s head. (It’s unclear if the linen wraps around the clay figure as well.)

“In the incantation…a number of gods are requested for help against the pain, the cause of which was, for lack of a better explanation, regarded as a manipulation by a demonic ‘opponent,’” Popko writes. He explains that the clay crocodile was a magical requisite, an object required or necessary for the spell to function. Since crocodiles were considered divine helpers against evil, the figure is supposed to absorb the pain and then be discarded. Other clay figures—of ibises, dwarfs, and women—were prescribed for other ailments.

This was all magical: the clay was not intended as a cooling compress applied to the head of the sufferer; the god-blazoned linen was not a bandage.

Did it work? Placebos and the power of suggestion all can be medically beneficial, but the only thing that can be said with certainty about all this is that a clay crocodile probably smelled a lot better than a four-day-old catfish head.

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