The piece of papyrus reveals how ancient Egyptians tried pregnancy

3,500 years ago, Egyptian women realized they had children by mixing urine in bags of barley and wheat. If seeds germinate, they are pregnant.

Egyptian researcher Kim Ryholt at the University of Copenhagen discovered a papyrus from ancient times with instructions on how to recognize a pregnant person. When a woman wants to know if she has children, she will urinate into a mixture of barley and emmer (an ancient Egyptian variety of wheat).

'If they germinate, she will give birth. If the barley grain grows, the child is a boy. If the emmer seed grows, it's a girl. The seed does not germinate means the woman has no children ' . This is an excerpt of the interpretation of the words on the papyrus found by CNN. The ancient passage was written in hieratic, an obscure cursive form of the Egyptians dating from about 1,500-1,300 BC.

The 3,500-year-old papyrus piece reveals how ancient Egyptians tested pregnancy using urine and barley.(Photo: CNN).

The first time this text was translated was in 1939 deciphered by a Danish Egyptologist. But this papyrus is just one of 1,400 other papyrus papers found by a team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). Most of them have not been translated yet.

Promising new insights

Translation is a long process."The texts are mostly damaged, they are written in an ancient script that few people can read, with complicated terms," said researcher Ryholt.

However, the rare piece of coded paper has revealed the interesting thing about how the ancient people discovered a pregnant woman. The same barley and wheat trials were also recorded on another papyrus at the Egyptian Museum of Berlin, Germany.

The method of the ancient Egyptians was used by many other kingdoms.(Photo: Medical History).

In the past, many Egyptologists believed that ancient civilizations were unaware of the existence of kidneys. But the content from the collection of papyrus pieces revealed the truth far different from the imagination of the researchers. According to CNN, various papyrus has written about how to treat eye diseases such as infections, ingrown eyelashes. The other piece records the mixing of the blood of a lizard, a bull, a donkey and a goat into a mixture, which is then injected into the eye for treatment.

70% of pregnant women's urine causes seed germination

Through research, we can see that the method of pregnancy test recorded in the papyrus paper is used by many kingdoms. Sofie Schiødt, a member of the research team, said they found traces of this test in Greek and Roman medicine, in the Middle East in the Middle Ages and in European medical traditions. A book on German folklore appeared on the same test in late 1699.

According to Andreas Winkler, an Egyptologist from Oxford University (UK), this method is credited because in ancient world, Egyptian medicine was highly respected and used by many countries.

When testing the accuracy of the pregnancy test using urine and wheat, barley, 70% of cases give the right results. An article published in the journal Medical History in 1963 showed that 70% of pregnancy test urine of pregnant women caused rice germination. However, they conclude that this approach is not credible to judging the sex of the child.

The cause of seed germination is the high estrogen concentration in the mother's urine, which stimulates the growth of wheat and barley. Is this because ancient Egyptian physicians were knowledgeable about hormones in urine? Researcher Sofie Schiødt denied this. She believes that they judge through trials.

16th-century Europe recognizes pregnant people through the color of urine. Specifically, the urine of pregnant women is pale yellow to milky. By the nineteenth century, medicine began to pay attention to the signs of morning sickness of women to determine the status of pregnancy or not.

In 1836, for the first time, the first sign of pregnancy was taken into consideration and questioned by a French doctor. During the first 6-8 weeks of pregnancy, the vagina can be dark green or purple red. The cause is an increase in blood flow to this organ.

In 1886, during a meeting of the American Gynecological Association, Dr. James Read Chadwick announced how to identify pregnant people through the color of the private parts. Later, it was called Chadwick's sign.

• 5 methods to try ancient bizarre pregnancy
• How to take a pregnancy test, make up the occult medicine in ancient Egypt