Ebers medical papyrus
The Ebers Papyrus is the most famous and longest-running medical papyrus.
The date of the papyrus goes back to the sixteenth century B.C. because it bears the date of the ninth year of the reign of King “Amenhotep I,” the second king of the eighteenth dynasty. However, studying it from a linguistic point of view leaves no room for doubt that its writer collected his material from several medical papyri. From the era of the Middle Kingdom and perhaps before that.
It was found in Luxor in 1863 AD, then the German archaeologist “George Ebers” obtained it from “Edwin Smith” and published it in 1875 AD, and “Walter Friesensky” published four parts of it in 1913 A.D., and “B. Apple” in 1937 A.D. It was also published, and “Hermann Grabo” and his colleagues analyzed this papyrus and others in a study of eight parts (1958-1960), and “Gustave Lefevre” in 1956 A.D. also studied the papyrus with others.
The length of this papyrus is 20.23 meters, and its width is 30 cm, and its text is in 108 columns, each containing 20 or 22 lines. The writer neglected the numbers 28 and 29, while the last column gave 10.
Papyrus contents:-
This and the Ebers Papyrus This is not a medical book divided into chapters and chapters but rather a collection of literature and research on topics from more than forty different sources.
The papyrus contains 887 medical prescriptions for various types of diseases and their symptoms and the method of examining and treating them, twelve of which are the treatment of ruqyah. Among them are also a large number of women’s diseases. Diseases and the exorcism caused by them
This and the papyrus can be limited to give an idea of ​​the science of this time and the extent of specialization in it, and it includes:
pleas of the gods.
Internal diseases and their treatment are the first author in the history of the world to treat the secret of life with non-religious or magical philosophical reflections, even if he refers most of the internal diseases to spiritual causes.
Recipes for eye diseases.
Recipes for skin diseases and recipes for adornment, cosmetics, and hair growth.
Prescriptions for diseases of the extremities.
Various recipes for several diseases in the head and teeth.
Gynaecological diseases and their treatment.
Two books on the heart and arteries are the only authors that have reached us in the fields of anatomy and physiology.
Surgical diseases and their treatment, and this section did not deal with wounds but was limited to tumours and abscesses.
Some of the papyrus prescriptions included the method of diagnosis, some of them associated with treatment, and some of them were therapeutic indications. “Ebel” identified fifteen diseases from the clinical descriptions, including swelling, ascites, hydrocele, and leprosy. However, linguists were not satisfied with this. All translations and interpretations.
Let us now mention some of the clinical descriptions that came in the papyrus:
In instructions for angioma, he says: “If you examine a tumour in the vessels in one end of the extremities and find that a hemisphere is pulsing, but if you separate it from the rest of the body it does not pulsate, say about it: It is a tumour in a vessel, it is a disease that I will treat, it is the vessels that caused it, and it may An injury caused it to the vessels.” This is an accurate description of an arterial tumour and its features.
And in a description of angina, he says: “If you examine a stomach patient who complains of pain in his arm, chest, and part of his stomach, say about him: This is something (i.e., a soul) that has entered his mouth, and death threatens him.”
The importance of the Ypres Encyclopedia is not limited to the clinical descriptions it provided, as it is also considered our main reference in the pharmacology of the ancient Egyptians and in what is now called “the medicinal substance”.