ABSTRACT
The earliest example of conjoined twins is a 17-cm marble statuette portraying parapagus twins, ‘the double goddess’, dating from the sixth millennium bc. The statue of the sisters of Catathoyuk is housed in the Anatolian Civilisation Museum in Ankara, Turkey. Another early example is a stone carving of pygopagus twins dated to bc80 in the St Marco Museum, Florence, Italy. The earliest attempt at separation of conjoined twins occurred in Kappadokia, Armenia, in ad970. When one of the male ischiopagus twins died, aged 30 years, an attempt was made to save the surviving twin by separating him from his dead brother, but he died 3 days later.
