The Innovative History of the Artificial Limb Stretches as Far Back as Ancient Egypt
Today, the technology has come so far that anyone with a 3D printer can create highly engineered and artful prostheses
The world’s oldest known prosthesis is a superbly sculpted 3,000-year-old wooden toe. Discovered in the late 1990s in the tomb of Tabaketenmut, an Egyptian priest’s daughter buried in a site dubbed “The Valley of the Nobles,” the ancient big toe has three parts laced together to flex with the foot while walking. It blends beauty and function in a way that, for most of human history, was available only to individuals of high social status like Tabaketenmut. In fact, the precious materials and painstaking craftsmanship of these artifacts may partly explain their survival over the centuries.
Some of the biggest mechanical breakthroughs came in the 16th century, many building off one another in unexpected ways: European locksmiths, clockmakers and even gunsmiths used their new techniques to create luxe artificial limbs. The results were artfully crafted mechanical hands in iron, brass and wood. In most of these devices, wearers used a natural hand to move the artificial fingers into locked positions, then pressed a release button to free them. Scholars’ estimates suggest Renaissance elites were willing to pay a jaw-dropping amount for prostheses. One 17th-century example from Germany cost as much as a large farm—buildings, fields, livestock and all.
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This article is a selection from the June 2025 issue of Smithsonian magazine
No need to sell the farm anymore, though: Today, anyone with access to a 3D printer can create highly engineered and artful prostheses. Technological breakthroughs in customizable sockets, where the prosthesis connects to the body, allow users to simply download DIY files from online forums, then print made-to-order tools at home. And the printable devices go way beyond hands. Some are extensions you can mount onto video game controllers; another device helps you shoot an arrow from a bow. And nonprofit organizations, such as Limbitless Solutions, are harnessing this technology to make myoelectric arms—prostheses that use electrical signals from wearers’ muscles to guide battery-powered movement—available for free.
As it opens possibilities for our future, the 3D printing boom is also clarifying our past: Historians are printing models of artifacts from as early as the third century B.C. in order to learn more precisely how ancient prostheses worked. A German research team recently printed a version of a 300 B.C. leg prosthesis found in the Campania region of Italy, and an American team, of which I am part, is testing a printed 16th-century hand to learn about the everyday lives of amputees. Physical experiments examining how wearers used prostheses are unthinkable for oh-so-breakable artifacts. But cheap plastic models? Break one, print another.
And printable files of ancient protheses, once made, can be shared. This would have shocked the social elites who once wore them. For the first time in the long history of these artifacts, 3D printing holds a tantalizing promise: Anyone can have one.