The Papyrus Ebers and the Medicine of the West

The Papyrus Ebers and the Medicine of the West Gundolf Keil English translation by Microsoft and edited by Klaus Ammann until page 22. Γλανχας Αδηνξε ψερειν - No, it’s certainly not about owls of course, and if the veterinary papyrus from Kâhûn deals also with sick birds (as well as with sick fish, the Nile-Cichlids), even then the diseased poultry of the veterinary Papyrus certainly are not owls, but elderly geese. "Owls to Athens" rather means to deal with the Papyrus Ebers. Actually, who does not know it, the calligraphic work of art; who would not see its aesthetic beauty before his eyes; who does not know of the thousands of images circulating about it, who was not among the students of thousands of classes that have rolled past it, stretched behind glass panels –admiring it’s exhilarating color -: actually the pages of the "final part" that showed writings on both sides and claimed more than two meters. It was 18 meters and 63 centimeters long when Georg Ebers in 1873 was able to acquire it. The space written extended to 20,23 m; thanks to FELIX VON OEFELE, who ordered the exact mensuration in 1906. 1941 the Papyrus Ebers is among the precious objects to be rescued from air attacks of the allies – first placed into the vault of a branch of the German Bank, then transferred in 1943 to the castle of the town of Rochlitz, in 1945 occupied by Russian police forces. When the University Library got access to their "most valuable stocks" in 1946, the Papyrus was found "no more in the house, but "outdoors " in a dog’s kennel under manure and dirt". Some "protective glasses [were] shattered, at one position, the delicate written cloth of the Papyrus [...] had suffered, essential parts including the large end piece were missing completely. They could be not found [...] until today”. The total relocation loss amounts to 28 (from 102) columns, they fully or partially perished. In this respect only three-quarters of the magnificent Papyrus survived the post-war period. However, Egyptology made provisions by producing a facsimile which was released by GEORG EBERS in 1875, together with his assistant LUDWIG STERN: "The largest and most beautiful Papyrus, Germany so far is holding, the third-largest of all ever existing" and which he purchased only two years before. And this acquisition story, reviewed by REINHOLD SCHOLL - reads like a detective story, in which the devious American EDWIN SMITH (“a big crook”) plays a central role: for many years he disseminated to experts the fake story to actually own […] a “large medical codex”, he even offered it in an auction catalogue, but could not present it on request, since the rolls were not in his possession after all and he was not able to request it as its owner. The assertion to have purchased the papyrus 1862 in Luxor proofs in hindsight to be a fraudulent maneuver of an antiquarian dealer for profit maximization. 12 Gundolf Keil Still in Egypt EBERS started to study his Papyrus: "with great care", which was "huge role... rolled up". It displayed in appalling "beauty": not one "missing page"; not a single "unreadable letter" could be found. The initials shining in "red" "the actual text" was "written with black ink". "Lying prone on the ground to" the role EBERS "studied with terrible efforts page by page and [...] grasped so far the content of the whole work so that he [the] overlooked the entire contents", understanding the compilation "as a compendium of the entire Egyptian Medicine" and even discovered parallels in the Berlin Papyrus 3038: three and a half weeks after acquiring the role he reported on March 26, 1873 from Cairo: "similar notes are brought forward in a well- known Papyros, which is preserved in the Berlin Museum , and which seems to me an excerpt from our papyrus". EBERS also tried a dating of the "great and noble work of the art of Hierograms". While he remains relatively vague in its Papyrus Ebers article from May/June 1873 and refers to the first centuries of the new Kingdom (1552-1306 BC..), he specified by the end of March the creation time to around 1550 B.c.: "I will hardly be mistaken, if I refer the creation time of the papyrus EBERS to the XVIII Egyptian Dynasty, that is in the seven [!]"tenth century B.C. ". The investigations into the (1516 B.C.) subsequently registered calendar on the back of the roll back roughly confirmed this time frame. GEORG EBERS - appointed full professor in the year of the publication of his facsimile edition (1875) - dealt as the Leipzig Egyptologist in essays about his papyrus roll. He however did not achieve to finish the editorial preparation of the medical compendium, as well as he was not given the chance to finish the ambitious objective to determine the "meaning of each individual word". The "years" such a task "would require", and already in 1876 he was tied up to the bed due to his frequent "spinal cord ailments" which forced him to give up his teaching position and to fill out the last two decades of his life to work as a writer. He still lived to see the release of 32 volumes of his collected works ; several of his historical novels playing in the Egyptian late period; in 1898, he died at the age of 51. Others have continued his work: first HENRICH JOACHIM, the 1890 "The oldest book about medicine [...] fully translated" appeared in Berlin. His transliteration to-day is only of importance for science historians, where-as WALTER WRESZINSKI launched in 1913 a hieroglyphic The Papyrus Ebers and the Medicine of the West 13 transcription based on the analytical source of the Neuenahr medic FELIX VON OEFELE, and in its precise micro-structure still is the basis of the present day paraphrasing of the Compendium. The second volume of his edition which should get ready the compilation in "Translation and Commentary" - he was no more able to accomplish it due to the war. Here, BENDIX EBBELL, district physician to Stavanger, has jumped in, and in 1937 his German translation was published in Copenhagen. With view to profit maximization the text was rewritten in English, but remains only for German-speaking readers understandable. EBBELL brought out two years later a part of the original German version. The translation impresses with it’s reliability in the medical hermeneutics. HERMANN GRAPOW is also seen in succession of WALTER WRESZINSKI, he overall follows WRESZINSKI’s plan for two decades to present "The medicine of the ancient Egyptians" and brought to completion nine volumes: his Outline of the Medicine of the Ancient Egyptians, which began to appear in 1953 (preceded in 1935-36 by a study on the people who brought to light the traditional knowledge), creating the basis for all later investigations and approaches the Papyrus Ebers from its subjects, its vocabulary and its grammar on. In addition, the compendium is made available in hieratic transscription and in German translation. PAUL GHALIOUNGLI, who in 1983 had brought out at the Mainz Academy his treatise on The physicians of Pharaonic Egypt as an employee of the "German Archaeological Institute" to Cairo. He let follow already four years later his "new translation" in English language which he commented and accompanied by a glossary. Eight years later, THIERRY BARDINET was able to present the entire Les Papyrus Médicaux de l’Égypte pharaonique, where he devote 26 pages to the Papyrus Ebers. Already in 1988 BARDINET pre-published the investigations to dermatological diseases, as well as to religious chastity. WOLFHART WESTENDORF, along with wife VON DEINES, who supported already in the 1950s GRAPOW with the drafting of the Grundriss (outline), crowned the examinations to the "most beautiful and longest" of all manuscripts of antiquity with his monumental Handbook of ancient Egyptian medicine, which describes the Papyrus in terms of content, fully translated and refers back again and again to this unique document with numerous special investigations on nosology, pathology, diagnosis, therapy, as well as to the medical and pharmaceutical environment. But the studies on the Papyrus Ebers are thus certainly anything but finished, this is shown by a glimpse of tomorrow's program, revealing the codicological research by REINHOLD SCHOLL and also by a revision of FRANS JONCKHEERES highlighting problems in the middle of the last century. The previous century however has set remarkable medicine historical accents, not only in the 1940s, but right at its beginning, that proved fundamental until today, not only in view of papyrology, but also linguistically, 14 Gundolf Keil by offering progressive approaches. I am thinking less of observations to the magic between medicine, which were successfully continued by KOLTA/SCHWARZMANN-SCHAFHAUSER, but merely remind you of the Neuenahrer doctor FELIX VON OEFELE, who immediately after 1900 followed GEORG EBERS suggestions and sought to dismantle the medical compendium under the term of "divorce of sources" in the original pieces and sought to dissect them according to provenances. Observations of EBERS were preceded which for over three thousand years, - "lying beside the Papyros on the ground" (I said it before) – who had read scroll for the first time and indeed found extensive matches with the Berlin Papyrus 3038. He assumed that the smaller Berlin Papyrus was younger – indeed he is in fact so for three centuries - and he suspected that the small Berlin scroll offers "excerpts" from the great papyrus he just acquired. Although this excerpt theory has not been confirmed (I will come back on this still), the letter dated on March 26, 1873, from Cairo offers nevertheless a text linguistic comment, which highlighted clearly that GEORG EBERS already recognized in his first reading in Cairo, that the text scroll acquired by him offered not an original text, but a conglomerate of text pieces - he speaks of "Notes" - and that this text chunks of different size have been composed to a kind of "Compendium" - this with the aim to achieve "nothing less" than a representation of the "entire Egyptian Medicine".

Load more