ABSTRACT
The extensive modern literature claiming that the ancient Egyptians could make gold fillings and use other dental techniques derives largely from nineteenth-century allegations and outright fabrications of evidence. The frequent references found in various histories of dental medicine that ascribe the origins of dental appliances to the ancient Egyptians are simply spurious. Weinberger's account was far from the first to create an erroneous report regarding supposed Egyptian gold dental appliances. Some false reports in the early nineteenth century may have been generated by the discovery in Italy, near the end of the eighteenth century, of at least one real ancient gold dental appliance. A few other attempts to establish Near Eastern primacy in dental appliances have occurred over the years. Masali suggested that the Sumerians made early use of gold wires to hold teeth in place, as a post-mortem activity "related to the esthetics of embalming".
