The Case of a Broken Nose

Edwin Smith Papyrus, Case 11

Broken noses have long disfigured history: from the erroneous legend of Napoleon and his troops firing a cannonball at the nose of the Greek Sphinx during the French campaign in Egypt, to the thousands of nose-less statues from antiquity. Whilst some were likely to have been deliberately vandalised by other groups of people, especially the early Christians, the most likely cause of noselessness is probably an accidental drop.

Bad Blood

These two objects were among fourteen bronze cupping vessels excavated from the site of Pompeii, the Roman town just inland of the Bay of Naples, which fell to the mercy of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. Cupping vessels were just one type of the many surgical and medicinal devices found across the Roman city, which included speculums, forceps, hooks and probes. These two cupping vessels were found in a building known as ‘the House of the Surgeon’, after the concentration of medical instruments found there, as pictured below.

Navel-gazing

So saying, [Zeus] sliced each human being in two, just as they slice sorb-apples to make a dry preserve, or eggs with hairs; and at the cleaving of each he bade Apollo turn its face and half-neck to the section side, in order that every one might be made more orderly by the sight of the knife’s work upon him; this done, the god was to heal them up. Then Apollo turned their faces about, and pulled their skin together from the edges over what is now called the belly, just like purses which you draw close with a string; the little opening he tied up in the middle of the belly, so making what we know as the navel.