Queen Meresankh III – the oldest case of bilateral Silent Sinus Syndrome (c. 2620/10 - 2570 BC)? . Anthropologie (Brno) 56, 2: 103-113'.

While studying literature on crania of Egyptian royal families, photographs of the skull of Queen Meresankh III caught our attention because of the unusually shaped orbits, skull vault and suborbital areas. A retrospective craniometric analysis clearly suggests a pathological condition. Materials & Methods: In this multimodal, interdisciplinary study we reassessed the excavation report of Queen Meresankh III’s mastaba tomb in Giza (Egypt) as well as a publication in the anatomical record (Dunham and Simpson, 1974). Precise craniometric measurements were obtained by application of a three-dimensional (3D) image reconstruction method, which was compared to reference data from two different databases. A differential diagnosis was established in consensus by the authors with regard to the found pathologic craniometric measurements as well as to the biographic information available from the historical sources. The width of the skull is pathologically increased, while the cranial capacity is in a normal range. The orbit widths compare well with existing data, while orbit heights exceed ranges of normal women by more than 2 standard deviations. On account of the presented evidence, a retrospective diagnosis of Silent Sinus Syndrome for Queen Meresankh III may be reasonably postulated, making it the world’s oldest case of the Silent Sinus Syndrome.