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Adel H Allam, Abdelhalium Nureldin, Gomma Adelmaksoub, Ibrahem Badr, Hany Abdel Amer, Muhamed Al-Tohamy Soliman, Gregory S Thomas, Randall C Thompson, Michael I Miyamoto, Ian G Thomas, Adam Thompson and Samuel Wann
American Heart Hospital Journal Volume 8 No.1

Traveling home to California after an international cardiology congress a few years ago, Dr Gregory Thomas stopped in Cairo to visit Dr Adel Allam, an Egyptian cardiologist and nuclear cardiology expert. Dr Allam took Dr Thomas to see the mummies exhibited at the world-famous Egyptian National Museum in downtown Cairo. While there, the two cardiologists took special note of an inscription on one of the glass cases, which announced that the mummy on display, King Menephtah, had suffered from atherosclerosis. Like most of us, Drs Allam and Thomas were surprised that atherosclerosis could have occurred in humans three millennia ago. They immediately questioned the scientific evidence supporting the claim that this 3,200- year-old mummy had suffered from atherosclerosis. Did ancient Egyptians really have atherosclerotic heart disease? After all, heart attacks are the product of 'modern' lifestyles. We believe that atherosclerosis and heart attacks are the end result of consuming an atherogenic diet and inadequate physical exercise. Surely the ancient Egyptians ate a more healthy diet than modern humans and lacked the modern conveniences that enable us to pursue sedentary lifestyles? After all, the ancient Egyptians built the great pyramids by hand without modern machinery, and 'fast food' was yet to be invented.

These questions did not go away after Drs Allam and Thomas returned to their busy clinical cardiology practices in Egypt and the US, respectively. How do we know for sure that ancient Egyptians had cardiovascular disease? How prevalent was cardiovascular disease in ancient Egypt? What caused cardiovascular disease so long ago? Did ancient Egyptians really have atherosclerosis so long ago? Are our assumptions about the modern lifestyle being responsible for the current epidemic of cardiovascular disease all wrong? To answer these questions, Drs Allam and Thomas asked another question: can modern cardiovascular diagnostic techniques such as computed tomography (CT) be used to investigate the cardiovascular system in mummies that are thousands of years old?

In a classic example of networking, Drs Allam and Thomas put together an international team of friends, friends of friends, colleagues, and grateful patients to answer these questions (see Figure 1). This constantly expanding group includes Egyptologists, preservationists, clinical cardiologists and imaging specialists, philanthropists, and many others—old and new friends all fascinated by ancient Egyptian mummies and interested in the questions raised about heart disease in ancient civilizations (see Figure 2).

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