In the time of the celebrated historian Herodotus, of Halicarnassus, who lived in the fifth century previous to the Christian era (about from 500 to 424 B.C.), that is, more than a thousand years after the time in which the Ebers’ papyrus was written, the dental art in Egypt had made remarkable progress, and was exercised by specialists. In fact, in the second book of Herodotus we find the following passage: “The exercise of medicine is regulated and divided amongst the Egyptians in such a manner that special doctors are deputed to the curing of every kind of infirmity; and no doctor would ever lend himself to the treatment of different maladies. Thus, Egypt is quite full of doctors: those for the eyes; those for the head; some for the teeth; others for the belly; or for occult maladies.”[8] Having here had occasion to refer to the _History_ of Herodotus, we will quote two passages of this famous work, which have a certain interest for our subject; “Whilst the tyrant Hippias, after having been driven out of Athens (510 B.C.), was marching against Greece at the head of the Persian army and had already arrived at Marathon, he happened one day to sneeze and to cough in a more vehement manner than usual; and he being already an old man, and his teeth all shaking, a violent fit of coughing suddenly drove one of them out of his mouth, and it having fallen into the dust, Hippias set to work, with great diligence, to search for it; but the tooth not coming to light, he drew a long sigh, and then said, turning to those who were standing by: ‘This land is not ours, neither shall we ever be able to have it in our power; what clings to my tooth is all of it that will ever belong to me.’”[9] In another part of the _History_, that is, in the ninth book, Herodotus recounts as follows: “When the corpses buried after the battle of Platea were already despoiled of their flesh, a curious fact was seen; for the people of Platea having collected the bones of those who had perished, there was found amongst them a skull altogether devoid of commissures, and composed of one single bone. A jaw was also found, the teeth of which, comprising the molars, appeared to be made all of one piece, as though composed of a single bone.” Relative to this last passage of Herodotus, we may remark, as does Stark, that the total synostosis of the skull bones is certainly very rare, but that, nevertheless, one has authentic examples of the same, not only in ancient but also in relatively modern times, witness the famous skull of Albrecht von Brandenburg, surnamed the German Achilles, who died in 1486, and was buried in the monastery of Heilbronn. As to teeth united together and forming a single piece, no example exists save in very ancient authors, for instance, in Valerius Maximus, who recounts a similar marvellous fact of Prusia, King of Bithynia, and in Plutarch, who attests to a similar fact in the person of Pyrrhus, King of Epirus.