The ancient Egyptians gave us modern farming and the great pyramids, and it turns out they may have a thing or two to tell us about the relationship between diet and heart health. Late last year, a team of Egyptologists and cardiologists took CT scans of 22 mummies, some deceased for more than three millennia, and found evidence of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, in more than half of them. The findings were a surprise, since atherosclerosis is widely believed to be a modern disease. One researcher is quoted as saying that the findings indicate the disease has been around “since before the times of Moses.”
