The Truth About Ancient Egyptian Birth Control

3,500 years ago, an Egyptian healer wrote down a recipe to stop a woman getting pregnant. It used honey, acacia and a scrap of wool. Did it work? Nobody can say for sure, but the recipe is real, and here is what the evidence actually shows. CHAPTERS 0:00 The recipe 0:22 The Ebers Papyrus 1:13 Egyptian medicine and honey 2:23 The Kahun women's papyrus 3:28 The birth control recipe 4:15 Did it work? 5:15 Crocodile dung 5:35 The grain pregnancy test 6:29 How to read ancient advice 6:52 Next video ACCURACY NOTE This video is based on ancient texts and modern scholarship. Most of what we know about ancient contraception comes from written recipes, not archaeology, and translations of these texts differ. Where we don't know, we say so. This is history, not medical advice. SOURCES Ebers Papyrus (Leipzig University Library): https://www.ub.uni-leipzig.de/en/about-us/... Guiter, J. (2001), BIFAO 101: https://www.ifao.egnet.net/bifao/101/11/ The Gynaecological Papyrus Kahun (Lopes & Pereira): https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/78710 Töpfer, S. (2014), Dynamis 34(2): https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/dynamis/dynamis_a2... Wound care history, Edwin Smith Papyrus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_w... #AncientEgypt #History #Archaeology