The ancient Egyptian animalarium: a connection with human health

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.Learning from ancient cultures is important to face current health challenges and communication in science plays a key role to advance research and education on basic questions in biomedicine and infectious diseases such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Ancient Egyptian culture is one of the references for the study of human patterns and processes throughout evolution. In particular, the concept of health likely started in ancient Egypt (3300 to 525 B.C.E.) where humans had in-depth knowledge of the animals that lived in the Nile Valley and animal representations were common in culture and divine realm. Paleogenetic studies using ancient DNA analysis of Egyptian human mummies have provided evidence on the presence of infectious diseases. However, is there a connection between ancient Egypt animal representations and human health? In this perspective I address this question by proposing possible relationship between selected animal representations and human health with implications for the control of infectious diseases and the evolution of host-pathogen interactions. Early understanding of potential sources of disease and its relationship to religious icons and burial practices does provide information about moderately ancient understanding of disease processes and their potential causes.This work was partially supported by the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha (JCCM), Spain and EU-FEDER (grant GALINFEC SBPLY/17/180501/000185). I thank Dr. Mona S. Mahmoud, Head of Veterinary Research Division at National Research Center (Giza, Egypt) for the invitation to the 9th International Conference of Veterinary Research Division on Animal Health for Global Health Security, Egypt, 2021"Peer reviewe