Early Baths Reveal Dysentery in Old Testament Jerusalem

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A research team led by the University of Cambridge says it’s the oldest example we have of this diarrhea-causing parasite infecting humans anywhere on the planet. The study is published in the journal parasitology.

“The fact that these parasites were present in the sediments of two Iron Age Jerusalem cesspools suggests that dysentery was endemic in the Kingdom of Judah,” said study lead author Dr. Piers Mitchell of the Cambridge Department of Archaeology.

“Dysentery is a term that describes intestinal infectious diseases caused by parasites and bacteria that cause diarrhea, abdominal cramps, fever and dehydration. It can be fatal, especially for young children.”

“Dysentery is transmitted through feces contaminating drinking water or food, and we suspect it might have been a big problem in early cities in the ancient Near East due to overcrowding, heat and flies, and a shortage of water available in the summer,” he said. Mitchell.

The fecal samples came from sediment under toilet bowls found in two excavated building complexes south of the Old City, dating to 7^he century BCE when Jerusalem was the capital of Judah.

During this time, Judah was a vassal state under the control of the Assyrian Empire, which at its height stretched from the Levant to the Persian Gulf, incorporating much of present-day Iran and Iraq. Jerusalem would have been a flourishing political and religious center estimated to have had between 8,000 and 25,000 residents.

Both toilets had carved stone seats of almost identical design: a shallow curved surface to sit on, with a large central hole for defecation and an adjacent hole at the front for male urination. “cesspool toilets from this era are relatively rare and were typically only made for the elite,” Mitchell said.

One was from a lavishly decorated estate in Armon ha-Natziv, surrounded by an ornamental garden. The site, excavated in 2019, likely dates to the days of King Manasseh, a client king of the Assyrians who ruled for fifty years in mid-7th.^he century.

The site of the other bath, known as the House of Ahiel, was a domestic building made up of seven rooms, housing an upper-class family at the time. The date of construction is difficult to pin down, and some place it around 8^he century BC

However, its destruction is securely dated to 586 BC. C., when the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II brutally sacked Jerusalem for the second time after its citizens refused to pay their agreed tribute, ending the Kingdom of Judah.

Ancient medical texts from Mesopotamia during the first and second millennium BCE. C. describe the diarrhea that affected the populations of what is now the Near and Middle East. An example says: “If a person eats bread and drinks beer and subsequently has colic in the stomach, has cramps and intestinal discharge, the setu caught him.”

The cuneiform word often used in these texts to describe diarrhea was sà si-sá. Some texts also included recommended incantations to recite to increase the chances of recovery.

“These early written sources do not provide the causes of diarrhea, but they encourage us to apply modern techniques to investigate what pathogens might have been involved,” Mitchell said. “We know for sure that giardia He was one of those responsible for the infections.”

The team investigated decomposed feces from the 2,500-year-old Biblical period using a biomolecular technique called “ELISA,” in which antibodies bind to proteins produced uniquely by particular species of single-celled organisms.

“Unlike the eggs of other intestinal parasites, the protozoa that cause dysentery are fragile and extremely difficult to detect in old samples through microscopes without using antibodies,” said co-author and Cambridge PhD candidate Tianyi Wang.

The researchers tested for entamoeba, giardia and cryptosporidium: three parasitic microorganisms that are among the most common causes of diarrhea in humans and behind outbreaks of dysentery. tests for entamoeba and cryptosporidium were negative, but those of giardia they were repeatedly positive.

Previous research has dated traces of the Entamoeba parasite, which also causes dysentery, to the Greek Neolithic more than 4,000 years ago. Previous work has also shown that users of the ancient Judean baths were infected by other intestinal parasites, such as whipworms, tapeworms and pinworms.

This research was carried out through a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority.