Ca. 305BCE

Leprosy (Elephant’s Disease; Elephantiasis) reaches Egypt by the time of the Ptolemaic Kings (after 305BCE), and Greek physicians in Alexandria began seeing cases of it in early decades of 3rd century. Then, four skeletons discovered in Dakhleh Oasis (of Egypt’s western desert) showed effects of leprosy: “These skeletons belonged to Europeans, either Greeks or Macedonians, not to native Egyptians, and they were dated to the second century BC. The results of this bioarchaeological research prove that Mycobacterium leprae arrived in the Mediterranean basin sometime after Alexander’s Eastern conquest” (Miller & Nesbitt,10-11).