The Study of Disability in Ancient Egypt and Beyond
May 2025 | Vol. 13.5
By Alexandra F. Morris
Disability has always been a part of human history, including in ancient Egypt. In fact, due to the environment in Egypt, such as the arid desert in which the ancient Egyptians built their tombs, we arguably have more evidence for disability than in many other ancient cultures. However, until recently (the past 10 years), the subject has rarely been studied in Egyptology or in a broader ancient world studies context. This has resulted in an entire minority group being erased from history and an incomplete, dehumanized understanding of our ancient past. When it has been mentioned at all, disability has been most cited in studies of human remains. However, due to medical model framing, which tends to study a person as if their sole relevance is the existence of a disease, disability is rarely explicitly mentioned or acknowledged with its full implications.
The books Disability in Ptolemaic Egypt and the Hellenistic World: Plato’s Stepchildren (Morris 2024), and Disability in Ancient Egypt and Egyptology: All Our Yesterdays (Morris and Vogel 2024) are not only the first ever comprehensive books about disability in ancient Egypt, but also the first to utilize Critical Disability Studies. This context recognizes disability as part of a person’s identity, by exploring disability as a complex lived experience by examining all aspects of the person’s life, including their intellectual or bodily differences as well as their societal involvement. Both books identify and clarify many instances of disability, but more importantly, they encourage people to thoughtfully consider the history of disabled people in ancient Egypt and how their histories are (mis)represented in various contemporary spaces.
All Our Yesterdays is an edited volume which covers a variety of topics related to disability and its receptions in Egyptology. This includes artistic and textual evidence and human remains, as well as more creative interpretations of disability such as male pattern baldness, eunuchs in the Greco-Roman period, and disabled masculinity as seen in the mutilation of Libyan prisoners. It also includes a comprehensive catalogue of disability imagery compiled by an Egyptian scholar, perhaps the first of its kind, and the examination of how disability is displayed today (if at all) in modern-day museum contexts. The volume is an international collection spanning across all career stages and generations. It is also the first of its kind to utilize most of the authors’ lived embodiment experiences to reexamine the ancient past, as most of the contributors, including the editors, are disabled themselves.
Plato’s Stepchildren is a single-authored book that aims to comprehensively examine ancient disability in Ptolemaic Egypt and the larger Hellenistic world through a close examination of art and artefacts. Among its chapters is one about a geographic area which focuses on disabled named individuals connected to ancient Macedonia. It discusses mobility impairments such as clubfoot and other similar conditions, as well as representations of people and mythological figures with dwarfism. There is a section on cerebral palsy, in which the author uses their own embodiment of the disability to better understand, identify ancient examples, and question historical biases. Blindness and vision impairments; spinal disability; and medicine, healing, and prosthetics are also examined.
Additionally, Plato’s Stepchildren posits that there was a strategically placed disabled ruling class in Ptolemaic Egypt, which directly influenced how disabled people were treated during this period. Disabled people were the ruling class and people in power for perhaps the first time in recorded history. What was unique to Ptolemaic Egypt during this time was the expansion of the prior policies of ancient Egypt and Alexander the Great, which themselves were continuations of policies started under Alexander’s father, Philip II, who realized there was a financial incentive in keeping military men alive and healthy. These policies occurred uniquely in Egypt under Ptolemaic rule, instituting a system in which disabled people were involved in both political and religious power.
Fig. 1: Stela of the doorkeeper Roma and his family making offerings to the goddess Astarte. 18th dynasty (c. 1401 – 1363 BCE), painted limestone. Picture by Fixi / Deutsches Grünes Kreuz, via Wikimedia Commons. CC By-SA 3.0.
The ancients depicted all aspects of daily life in their artwork, and this included disabled people. We have numerous examples of the artistic depictions of physical disability in ancient Egypt dating from the Predynastic to the Roman Period. These include (but are not limited to) disabled pharaohs and kings such as Tutankhamun, Siptah, Philip III Arrhidaeus, and Philip II. These rulers had a variety of congenital and acquired physical and intellectual disabilities. In addition, a range of bodily differences are represented in tomb wall scenes and in sculptures throughout ancient Egyptian history, including those of workers who appear as background people in these scenes, and many mass-produced depictions of disabled religious cult attendants, and other workers who appear in sculpture, amulets, and reliefs in the Ptolemaic Period. Many representations of dwarf persons and blind harpists are included in this art dating as far back as the Predynastic Period as well.
Not only depictions of disabled royalty have survived, but also people from the lower ranks of society, as exemplified by the 18th-dynasty stela depicting the doorkeeper Roma (Fig. 1). This image was recently reinterpreted utilizing a researcher’s lived experience to recognize that Roma had cerebral palsy. There were also many disabled gods, including Bes and his feminine counterpart Beset, who were depicted as gods with dwarfism. Harpocrates and his feminine counterpart Harpocratis, who both were depicted as having cerebral palsy, were popular gods. Pataikos, the Egyptian god of craftsmen, was another god who had dwarfism. Horus, one of the most important Egyptian gods, was blind in one or both eyes depending on the myth.
Fig. 2. Stela of the god Bes, waving a knife in one hand and in the other grasps a snake. The snake holds a rounded object, most likely a tambourine. Ptolemaic-Roman Period, painted limestone. Metropolitan Museum of Art 22.2.23. Public Domain.
Fig. 3. Statuette of the goddess Beset. Late Period or Ptolemaic Period. Cupreous Metal. Metropolitan Museum of Art 66.123.3. Public Domain.
Fig. 4. Amulet of the god Harpocrates. Late-Ptolemaic Period. 664-30 BC. Blue Faience. Metropolitan Museum of Art 44.4.29. Public Domain.
Finally, there was Hephaestus, craftsman to the gods, who had clubbed foot. All these gods were major deities who were incorporated into both a royal context as well as into everyday household use. They were protective deities and associated with craftsmen or other skilled professions in the ancient world. These examples all demonstrate that disability was incorporated into the very fabric of society in a religious and social context at all levels: from the divine and incredibly powerful to those who were part of everyday life in ancient Egypt. The artistic examples also demonstrate that there was a buyers’ market for this kind of art in the ancient world.
Disability, as we understand it, did not exist as a concept in the ancient world. One particular example which powerfully demonstrates that the ancients did not necessarily have the same discomfort with disability that exists today is a mould-made terracotta sculpture of an older child who is using a wheeled walking aid.
Fig. 5. Child with a wheeled-walking aid. 1st-2nd centuries CE. Terracotta. British Museum 1996,0712.2 ©The Trustees of the British Museum. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
This is a remarkably humanizing and joyful terracotta sculpture located in the British Museum. Thought to have come from Alexandria, Egypt, the sculpture is dated to the 1st or 2nd century CE. It is a depiction of someone with possible cerebral palsy, although it might also depict someone with polio. The child’s gender cannot be determined as they have a longer hairstyle. The child wears a tunic which is pulled and knotted up at waist level at the back. They also wear a protective pendant. The child’s head is tilted slightly to one side (in this case the left), something commonly seen in those with certain types of cerebral palsy due to muscle weakness. The child also has a posture of knees slightly bent and turned inwards, as is usual in cerebral palsy. The musculature on the right leg is more developed than on the left, which also is suggestive of cerebral palsy since muscle and posture weakness on one side of the body is typical.
As for the device the child stands on, Keith Armstrong previously identified this as a walking aid, suggesting that the sculpture is a representation of physical impairment. The walking aid has a triangular base, with wheels at each corner, a bar at the top to hold on to, and struts that drop vertically to the back wheels and at angle to the front wheels. The purpose of this art object is not definitively known, but it has been theorized that it is a visual depiction of part of someone’s biography. Running counter to the biographical narrative, however, is the fact it is mould-made, implying that there was a mass market for this type of art. This statue shows that representations of disabled people were possibly based on real life and desired on a mass scale. If this does indeed depict a disabled child, it is proof that adaptations were made to help those with mobility impairments navigate society. The gender in this case may be deliberately ambiguous as the client could then have it painted to specify a particular gender based on their preferences. This further implies that these people who utilized mobility aides were at least partially accepted into society.
Disabled people have always been a part of humanity. Modern day society projects its own discomfort about disability onto the past by ignoring it. Modern societal discomfort has led to the erasure of disabled people from historical narratives, even though we have always been here. The erasure of an entire group from history leads to an incomplete understanding of the ancient past. The new books described above are the first steps in rewriting the past to create a more nuanced understanding of the ancient world and, hopefully, a more equitable future for all.
Alexandra F. Morris is a Lecturer in Classical Studies at the University of Lincoln and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham. She is the author of Disability in Ptolemaic Egypt and the Hellenistic World: Plato’s Stepchildren (2024) and co-editor of Disability in Ancient Egypt and Egyptology: All Our Yesterdays (2024).
Resource List:
It is important to be careful about the terminology and phrasing you use when discussing disability, even in relation to the ancient world. For some recommendations and guidelines:
Alexandra F. Morris and Debby Sneed. “Blog: A Brief Guide to Disability Terminology and Theory in Ancient World Studies,” August 30, 2021, Society for Classical Studies Blog.
Australasian Women in Ancient World Studies, “Accessibility Resources”, put together as part of the AWAWS Sydney Chapter workshop on accessible research and teaching, Friday 25th June 2021: https://www.awaws.org/resources.html
Further Reading: For more research on disability in the ancient world that uses Disability Studies see:
Biggi, Justin L. “Judging the Body: Disability, Class and Citizen Identity—A Case Study from an Ancient Greek Lawcourt,” Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies 2.1 (2023): Article 3.
Morris, Alexandra F. “Let that Be Your Last Battlefield: Tutankhamun and Disability.” Athens Journal of History 6.1 (2020): 53–72.
Silverblank, Hannah and Marchella Ward. “Why does classical reception need disability studies?” Classical Receptions Journal 12.4 (2020): 502-530.
Sneed, Debby. “Ancient Greek and Roman Crip Lit.” Classical Journal 120.1 (2024): 37-61.
Sneed, Debby. “Disability and Infanticide in Ancient Greece,” Hesperia 90.4 (2021): 747-772.
Sneed, Debby. “The Architecture of Access: Ramps at Ancient Greek Healing Sanctuaries,” Antiquity (2020): 1-15.
Vogel, Hannah, and Ronika K. Power. “Recognising Inequality: Ableism in Egyptological Approaches to Disability and Bodily Differences.” World Archaeology (2023): 1–14.
Ward, Marchella. Blindness and Spectatorship in Ancient and Modern Theatres Towards New Ways of Looking and Looking Back. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
Zakaria, Nevine Nizar. “Unveiling Hidden Histories: Disability in Ancient Egypt and Its Impact on Today’s Society—How Can Disability Representation in Museums Challenge Societal Prejudice?” Social Sciences 13.12 (2024): 647.
How to cite this article:
Morris, A. F. 2025. “The Study of Disability in Ancient Egypt and Beyond.” The Ancient Near East Today 13.5. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/disability-ancient-egypt/.
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