Author: Hrothsige Frithowulf

The Hávamál, the High Song or the Sayings of the High One, is a collection of a total of 164 eddic verses that are counted among the Poetic Edda. “High” in “The High Song” or “The Sayings of the High One” refers to the Norse god Odin, who in the poem gives mortal humans advice on how to lead a successful and honorable life. Hávamál, as part of the Edda, belongs to the wisdom literature and is compared to the Indian Vedas or the Homeric poems of Greece. The poem is exclusively preserved in the Codex Regius from the 13th century, which has been kept in the Arnamagnæan Collection in Reykjavík since 1971. In the Codex Regius, Hávamál is included as the second text directly after the Völuspá under the title hava mal, which indicates the high importance attributed to the poem by the compiler of the Codex Regius.

The fact that Snorri Sturluson places the first verse of Hávamál at the beginning of his mythological textbook Gylfaginning and that Eyvindr Skáldaspillir quotes verses of Hávamál at the end of his poem Hákonarmál is taken as evidence that Hávamál was already known in the 10th century. Klaus von See sees a series of dependencies on Latin poetry, especially the Disticha Catonis, whether directly or through the mediation of other Old Norse poems like the Hugvinnsmál, and also quotes other works that point to Seneca and other literature known in the Middle Ages.

Theodoricus Monachus, who wrote the Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium in the 12th century, knew Plato, Chrysippus, Pliny, Lucan, Horace, Ovid, Virgil, the Church Fathers such as Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, and Augustine, and the late antique or medieval authors Boethius, Paulus Diaconus, Isidore of Seville, Bede, Remigius of Auxerre, Hugh of St. Victor, and Sigebert of Gembloux. This means that the Archbishop’s library in Nidaros was well stocked as early as the 12th century.

The earliest editions

In 1665, a very unreliable edition was published by Peder Hansen Resen, followed by editions in 1818 by Rasmus Christian Rask and Arvid August Afzelius, in 1828 by Finnur Magnússon, in 1843 by Franz Dietrich, and in 1847 by Peter Andreas Munch. The subsequent editions were based on Munch’s edition.

Content

Already in the 19th century, it was noted that the work was composed of several parts, with the number of parts and their boundaries being disputed. Hazelius assumed five parts, Müllenhoff apparently assumed six parts in 1883, and Finnur Jónsson in his monograph Hávamál (Copenhagen 1924) even assumed seven parts. The subheadings Ládfafnismál (“Loddfafnir’s Song”, verses 111–138), Rúnatal þáttr Óðinn (“Odin’s Rune Song”, verses 139–142), and Ljóðatal (“Magic Songs”, verses 147–165) are not found in the manuscript. Today, some scholars assume a division into three parts: Part I (verses 1–76), Part II (verses 78–110), and Part III (verses 111–165). According to this classification, the first part ends with the famous verse:

“Deyr fę,
deyia frǫndr,
deyr sialfr it sama;
ec veit einn
at aldri deýr:
domr vm dꜹþan hvern.”

Cattle die,
kinsmen die,
all men are mortal;
but words of praise will never perish
nor a noble name.

Here, some have wanted to see Christian echoes, as a similar train of thought can be found in Ecclesiastes 3:19. However, not everything that is similar must depend on each other.

In terms of content, the first two (of three assumed) parts deal with wisdom for life and rules of conduct. The parts differ in that in the first part, all possible topics are addressed and consistently described in the verse form Ljóðaháttr, while the teachings of the second part focus on wealth and gender relations. Klaus von See identifies the first-person narrator, who reports on his own views and experiences in some verses, quite naturally with Odin for the entire poem. Ottar Grønvik, on the other hand, sees him as an authorial narrative poet who reports on his development and also serves as a representation of people in relation to the divine. However, at one point in the first part, it is clearly Odin. The poet critically distances himself from Odin when he reduces Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál’s celebrated acquisition of poetic mead to a simple drinking spree.

The second part differs from the first part formally in that between the verses in the verse form of Ljóðaháttr, there are also simple list verses, e.g., verses 84–86. Practical advice, such as in verses 80–82, is also missing in the first part. They could be of a later date, but verse 80 must be very old, as it advises to praise a woman only after she has been cremated. The verse probably dates from the time of cremation. The same applies to verse 70. In the second part too, there are references to Odin that portray the god in an unfavorable light. In the first, Odin recounts the embarrassing failure of a forbidden love affair (verses 95–101). This passage is probably old because in verse 96, the word “Jarl” is used as the highest social position, indicating the pre-monarchical era. The second Odin story (verses 104–110) depicts Odin as a ruthless and immoral god. The ice giants inquire about “Bölverkr” in verse 109, which means evildoer. Here, too, Odin is not portrayed as a positive hero. In the past, Odin’s denigration was seen as having Christian influence. Today, it is assumed that there were not only tensions between paganism and Christianity but also within paganism between different cults. However, the poet was not irreligious, as verse 79 shows, in which he attributes the holy runes to the gods. Due to his moral standards, which he applies to Odin’s behavior, the poet can, with some probability, be assigned to the peasant religion of Thor and Freya.

The much-discussed verse 111 introduces the teachings of Loddfafnir:

Mál er at þylja
þular stóli á
Urðarbrunni at,
sá ek ok þagðak,
sá ek ok hugðak,
hlýdda ek á manna mál;
of rúnar heyrða ek dæma,
né of ráðum þögðu
Háva höllu at,
Háva höllu í,
heyrða ek segja svá:

It’s time to speak
from the seat of the speaker. (Þulr).
At the Well of Urd
I sat and was silent,
sat and pondered,
listened to the speech of men;
about runes I heard them speak,
and they did not withhold counsel
in the hall of the High One;
in the hall of the High One
I heard such things said:

The last verse of the Hávamál picks up this formulation, so it can be assumed that originally only this part between these framing stanzas bore the name Hávamál and was an independent poem.

The discussion revolves around the person of the “Þulr” (speaker) in the second line, which is often identified with Odin. Karl Müllenhoff, however, demonstrated through usage examples also in Old English that Þulr is a human speaker in the king’s hall, a powerful man. Therefore, he changed “manna mál” in line 6 to “Háva mál”. According to his view, the first-person narrator is a human speaker on the speaker’s chair who reports to the people what he heard at Urd’s Well, where Odin himself instructed him and addressed him as “Loddfafnir.” He refers to him as a rogue because in verse 113, he pretends Odin advised him not to get up at night unless he needed to urinate or was assigned as a guard. Müllenhoff dismisses verse 112 as a later addition. He was essentially followed by Finnur Jónsson. Sophus Bugge kept the text and interpreted verses 111ff. so that Loddfafnir sits on the speaker’s chair and announces to those present the religious revelation he received from Odin and initiated men about Odin’s self-sacrifice (verse 139). According to him, Loddfafnir is not a real person but a mythical-poetic figure. Axel Olrik saw a connection between the magical framework of the sorcerers (Seiðhiall) and the chair of the Þulr and considers the chair to be a magical prop. W. H. Vogt then emphasized the relationship between Völva and Þulr. He sees the high seat of the Völva and the poet’s chair of the Þulr on the same level.

A particular difficulty is that the Þulr is said to have received his revelation both at Urd’s Well and in the hall of the High One, which is commonly equated with Valhalla. However, both places were thought of as far apart in Norse mythology: Valhalla with the gods and Urd’s Well under the world tree Yggdrasil. A newer interpretation resolves this contradiction by suggesting that the hall of the High One is not Valhalla but a cult house dedicated to Odin and Urd’s Well is one of the sacred springs in close proximity. This assumes that there was originally no internal connection between the first two parts and the concluding third part, so that the designation “the High One’s Hall” in the last Odin adventure of the second part (verse 109), which clearly refers to Valhalla, cannot be transferred to the third part. The runes that the men speak of may be certain mystical-religious chants, as they are also referred to as runes in Vafþrúðnismál verse 42.

The name “Loddfáfnir” is composed of the two word stems “Lodd” and “favne” and a suffix -nir (e.g., Vafþrúðnir, Fjósnir in verse 12 of the Rígsþula and more), which was common at the time. “Lodd” poetically stands for “woman” and “fáfnir” is traced back to “faðmr”, “to embrace”. *Faðmnir is the Embracer and Loddfáfnir “he who embraces the woman”. From the immediately following stanzas, which deal with marital fidelity, one can imagine an honest man who passes on the firm moral norms of the peasant society, which he heard in the hall. This leads to verse 139:

Veit ek, at ek hekk
vindga meiði á
nætr allar níu,
geiri undaðr
ok gefinn Óðni,
sjalfr sjalfum mér,
á þeim meiði,
er manngi veit
hvers af rótum renn.

I know that I hung on a windy tree
nine long nights,
wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
myself to myself,
on that tree of which no man knows from where its roots run.

The last two lines are considered a later addition because they adopt the description of Yggdrasil under the name “Mímameiðr”, from which no one knows which root it grows from. Here, however, it is a sacred sacrificial tree on earth, to which the remark does not apply because no one knows where it is located.

The spear was Odin’s weapon and it played a special role in the sacrifice. With it, the sacrifice was wounded as a sign that it was dedicated to Odin. Adam of Bremen writes in his Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum about the sacrificial ceremonies in Uppsala, stating that they lasted for nine days and that each day a man was hanged on the sacrificial tree. The ritual sacrifice described in verse 139 would have taken place at the beginning of such sacrificial ceremonies, and the first sacrifice hung on the tree for as long as the celebration lasted. However, the first two lines of the following verse indicate that the Hávamál was not an ordinary fertility sacrifice:

Við hleifi mik sældu
né við hornigi;
nýsta ek niðr,
nam ek upp rúnar,
æpandi nam,
fell ek aftr þaðan.

No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn,
downwards I peered;
I took up the runes,
screaming I took them,
then I fell back from there.

The one sacrificed was not hung by the neck to die, but by the body, so that he could peer downward, and thus he acquired the runes. Learning by loudly speaking the material was the customary method of instruction at that time. By “runes” are meant the religious secrets and magical knowledge in fixed mnemonic verses, and they contrast with the bread and livestock of the fertility sacrifice. The image of the hanged sacrifice may also be described in verse 135:

oft ór skörpum belg
skilin orð koma
þeim er hangir með hám
ok skollir með skrám
ok váfir með vílmögum.

From shriveled skin
often comes wise word,
(of) the one who hangs with hides
and dangles among animal skins
and floats alongside sons of misfortune.

In Vestfold, remnants of a tapestry were found depicting nine men hanging from a tree. It is believed that Odin is speaking here. Sophus Bugge saw Christian influence in this, assuming a parallel to the crucifixion of Christ. This view was also recently supported by Britt-Mari Näsström. However, it contradicts the fact that the Bible does not speak of a sacrifice of God to himself but of the redemptive suffering of Jesus, who is a person of God distinct from the Father. Grønvik therefore assumes that it is not Odin but the Þulr from verses 111 and 112, who is the first-person narrator, experiencing a mystical union with Odin in ecstasy, as described for mystics in many religions. This mystical union with Odin simultaneously constitutes an initiation rite for a Þulr, as has been suggested earlier. It follows the notion that Odin hung in the World Ash Yggdrasil in mythical times. Yggr is one of Odin’s many names.

Grønvik believes to have found hints on the runestones of individuals referred to as Þulr. On the Snoldelev Stone from Zealand, it says, “Gunvald’s stone, son of Roald, tul in Salhauku(m)” (= Salløv).

Ethics

The philosophy of the poem is rooted in the belief in the worth of the individual, who nonetheless is not alone in this world but connected through an inseparable bond with nature and society. The cycle of life is complete and indivisible. The animate world, in all its manifestations, forms a harmonious whole. Violations against nature have immediate repercussions on the individual themselves. Each individual is responsible for their own life, happiness or unhappiness, and creates their own life from their own resources.

Standing on the desert plateau of Giza outside modern Cairo, the Great Pyramid of Pharaoh Khufu (completed around 2560 BC during the Fourth Dynasty) challenges the human imagination even in an era of tower cranes and laser surveyors. Constructed from roughly 2.3 million individual blocks of limestone and granite weighing an average of 2.5 tons apiece—with the heaviest granite ceiling beams inside the King’s Chamber tipping the scales at a staggering fifty to eighty metric tons each—the monument rose 146.6 meters (481 feet) into the sky with its four base sides aligned to true North, South, East, and West to within three-sixtieths of a single degree. Over the past three decades, a revolution in experimental archaeology, papyrus discoveries, and geophysical scanning has debunked myths of alien intervention and whip-lashed slave armies, revealing the brilliant real-world physics and engineering behind how the Egyptians built the pyramids.

Not Slaves: The Workers’ Village of Heit el-Ghurab and the Diary of Merer

For over two thousand years, a popular misconception originating with the fifth-century BC Greek historian Herodotus claimed that the pyramids were built by a hundred thousand starving enslaved prisoners whipped under the desert sun. Modern archaeology has completely overturned that myth:

• The Excavated Workers’ Town at Giza: Beginning in the late 1980s, archaeologists led by Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass excavated the vast pyramid-builders’ settlement of Heit el-Ghurab (“Wall of the Crow”) just south of the Sphinx. Instead of slave shackles, they unearthed industrial-scale royal bakeries, copper workshops, dormitories for rotating crews of 20,000 to 30,000 skilled Egyptian craftsmen and seasonal agricultural laborers, and hundreds of thousands of animal bones proving the workers were fed a high-protein luxury diet of prime roast beef, sheep, goat, Nile fish, garlic, bread, and beer every single day—and received orthopedic medical care when injured!
• The 2013 Discovery of the Diary of Merer: In 2013, at the ancient Red Sea port of Wadi al-Jarf, French archaeologist Pierre Tallet unearthed the oldest surviving papyrus logbooks in human history: the 4,500-year-old Diary of Merer, written by an actual middle-ranking inspector (Merer) who led a two-hundred-man boat crew during the twenty-sixth year of Pharaoh Khufu’s reign! Merer’s day-by-day logbook describes his crew quarrying fine white casing limestone at Tura on the east bank of the Nile, loading the stones onto wooden barges, and rowing them across the flooded Nile inundation basin right into artificial harbor canals dug at the foot of the Giza plateau.

Quarrying Limestone and 80-Ton Aswan Granite Without Iron or Wheels

How did Fourth Dynasty stonecutters quarry millions of blocks when Egypt was still in the Copper and Bronze Age and did not yet possess hardened steel chisels or wheeled cranes?

1. Quarrying Soft Core Limestone Locally: Over ninety percent of the Great Pyramid’s interior core blocks were quarried right on the Giza plateau just a few hundred yards south of the pyramid! Using work-hardened arsenical copper chisels and wooden mallets, masons cut narrow grid trenches around each block in the soft nummulitic limestone bedrock and pried the bottom loose using long wooden levers and wedges soaked in water to expand.
2. Pounding Hard Granite With Dolerite Balls and Quartz Sand Saws: For the rock-hard red granite brought five hundred miles down the Nile from Aswan to line the burial chambers, soft copper chisels would simply bend. Instead, quarrymen pounded trenches into the granite bedrock using ten-pound spherical hammerstones of even harder greenish-black volcanic dolerite, and sawed flat precision faces through granite blocks using toothless flat copper blades fed with a wet abrasive slurry of crushed quartz sand and water—where the hard quartz crystals (Mohs hardness 7) did the actual cutting!

The Wet-Sand Sled Trick: Cutting Friction by 50 Percent!

Once a 2.5-ton or 50-ton stone block was unloaded from a Nile barge at the Giza harbor, how did crews haul it across the sand and up the pyramid without wheels? By strapping the block onto a heavy, curved-runner wooden sled (sledge) pulled with thick papyrus and hemp ropes.

For a century, modern Egyptologists looked at a famous Twelfth Dynasty wall painting inside the Tomb of Djehutihotep (showing 172 men pulling a colossal sixty-ton alabaster statue on a wooden sled while a single worker stands on the front toe of the sled pouring liquid from a jar onto the sand right ahead of the runners) and dismissed the water-pourer as performing a purely religious purification ritual. In 2014, however, physicists at the University of Amsterdam tested a scale sled in a laboratory sand tray and proved the ancient Egyptians were masters of tribology (friction physics):

• If you pull a heavy wooden sled over bone-dry desert sand, a pile of loose sand heaps up in front of the runners and creates massive sliding friction.
• If you pour just the right amount of water (roughly 2% to 5% moisture volume) onto the sand directly in front of the sled runners, capillary water bridges bind the sand grains together into a firm, slick surface—cutting the pulling force required to move the sled in half (by 50%)!

Stepped Ramps, Post-Hole Pulleys at Hatnub, and Water Leveling

To raise those sleds up the rising tiers of the pyramid, engineers used systems of construction ramps built of brick rubble, desert clay (tafla), and gypsum plaster:

• External Straight, Wrapping, and Internal Ramps: For the lower third of the pyramid—which contains over half of the pyramid’s entire mass!—wide straight or zigzagging external ramps allowed teams to haul stones directly from the quarry onto the broad platform. For the narrower upper levels, researchers have proposed wrapping corkscrew ramps or an internal spiral tunnel ramp (investigated by architect Jean-Pierre Houdin and the ScanPyramids cosmic-ray muon tomography project, which discovered a massive thirty-meter unexplored “Big Void” above the Grand Gallery in 2017).
• The 2018 Hatnub Ramp Discovery: At the ancient alabaster quarry of Hatnub dating to Pharaoh Khufu’s exact reign, archaeologists uncovered a remarkably steep twenty-percent-grade rock-cut ramp flanked on both sides by two staircases and dozens of deep vertical post-holes—proving that Khufu’s engineers wrapped ropes around stout wooden posts like primitive pulleys to multiply human hauling power and drag multi-ton blocks up steep slopes!
• Leveling the Base With Water Trenches and Stars: Finally, to make the thirteen-acre rock base of the Great Pyramid flat and level to within **just two centimeters (less than an inch!) across 230 meters**, engineers cut a grid of shallow mud-walled trenches around the perimeter, filled them with water (which always forms a 100% level horizontal plane by gravity), marked the exact water line on every wall, and chiseled the rock down to the marks—before laying the outer white Tura limestone casing stones from the top down and polishing the seams so tightly that not even a human hair or a razor blade can slip between the blocks four and a half millennia later.

Pyramidion is the term used in archaeology to refer to the pyramid-shaped top, last, or final stone of a pyramid—called benbenet in Ancient Egyptian, associated with the so-called Benben—as well as the pyramid-shaped tip of an obelisk. Pyramidia from pyramid structures have nearly the same proportions as these structures and represent them in a reduced or condensed form. In the Old Kingdom, this form was carved out of a block of diorite, granite, or limestone. Often, the sides are inscribed and coated with electrum.

Discoveries

Not many pyramid tops from Egyptian pyramids have been found so far. For some of the findings, also due to the state of preservation, it is not certain whether they actually sat atop a pyramid and, if so, which one. Some may have also belonged to an obelisk.

From the Old Kingdom come the earliest ones. The limestone fragments of the pyramidion, now restored and standing in front of the Red Pyramid of Sneferu in Dahshur, which are about 5 feet high (see top illustration), are dated as the oldest to the time before 2620 BCE. Also belonging to the 4th Dynasty is the pyramidion of the cult pyramid (G I-d) of Khufu at the southeast corner of the Great Pyramid of Giza, and also the square base of a pyramidion of a subsidiary pyramid (G III-a) of Menkaure south of the Pyramid of Mykerinos, both in Giza and made of limestone.

Dating to the 5th Dynasty is a pyramidion fragment from the pyramid of Khentkaus II made of dark granite, which had a metal coating, and one near the Lepsius XXIV pyramid, both in Abusir. For the 6th Dynasty, several pyramidia are known, four alone from the complex of the Teti Pyramid in Saqqara, two of them with a rectangular base and each about 1.65 feet high.

From the Middle Kingdom and attributed to the 12th Dynasty are fragments of pyramidia made of red granite near two queen’s tombs of the pyramid complex of Senusret I in el-Lisht, inscribed fragments of the pyramidion of the pyramid of Senusret II in el-Lahun, as well as the inscribed one made of black granite from the pyramid of Amenemhat III in Dahshur (see illustration below).

Two uninscribed pyramidia made of black granite from the Second Intermediate Period, both at the entrance of a begun tomb construction (the South Pyramid), also in South Saqqara, and several fragments of the inscribed pyramidion from the pyramid of Khendjer, as well as, according to its inscription, that of the (so far unlocated) tomb of Aya I, all from the 13th Dynasty, also from the 17th Dynasty, that of the mudbrick pyramid of Nubkheperre Intef in Dra’ Abu el-Naga.

From the New Kingdom, numerous pyramidia are decorated according to a fixed image schema, from officials’ tombs, whose superstructure could be built as a brick pyramid at that time. This includes the 1.65 feet high pyramidion of Mose or Mes, a scribe of the 19th Dynasty during the time of Ramesses II, which was made of limestone in the 13th century BCE and is now housed in the Hildesheim Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum.

Geometric Proportions

The found pyramidia correspond in their shape to the idealized geometric body of a straight pyramid based on a square. Some have a rectangular base, most have a square base; differences exist in the dimensions of the base and the height, or in the size of the base and the slope of the sides. For a regular straight pyramid on a square base, the angle of inclination α of the four sides of the lateral surface results from the respective ratio of height h to base b (tan α = 2•h / b). For example, for a pyramidion on a square base with four exactly equilateral triangles as lateral surfaces, where all 8 edges are of equal length, an inclination angle of 54° 44′ (rounded height to base length ratio) results here.

Approximately that inclination angle was realized around 2650 BCE in the Old Kingdom during Pharaoh Sneferu’s first attempt to build a large unstepped pyramid in the 2nd construction phase of the Bent Pyramid on a square base of about 620 feet (190 m) in base length; however, due to the technical difficulty of stabilizing the enormous load of the structure, its upper part was then executed in the final 3rd construction phase with a shallower slope at an angle of about 44°. With this inclination angle, subsequently, 1.2 miles north on a larger base (base measurement about 720 feet), the first unstepped and un-bent large pyramid was erected, the roughly equally high Red Pyramid of Sneferu on the plateau of Dahshur.

Details of the Pyramidion of Amenemhet III.

The pyramidion of the structure also known as the Black Pyramid, which Pharaoh Amenemhet III of the 12th Dynasty in the Middle Kingdom had erected in Dahshur at the beginning of his reign, still before 1800 BCE, was found there in the rubble at the east base in the year 1900 CE. The pyramid-shaped capstone measures about 6 feet as the base length of the square base and about 4.6 feet in height; it is made of black granite and inscribed all around. Possibly, the stone, like the tips of some obelisks, was previously covered with electrum, a metallic alloy of gold and silver. The slightly worn smooth surface, however, also suggests that this pyramidion was never placed atop a pyramid.

During the construction of the Black Pyramid in Dahshur, subsidence and cracks in the structure, which was too heavy for its foundation, became apparent.

At an assumed slope angle of around 57°, it would have become or was the highest pyramid built in the Middle Kingdom, reaching over 262 feet. Soon after this first one, Amenemhet III began the construction of a second one, the Hawara Pyramid with the same base (side length about 345 feet), but with a lower inclination angle (around 49°) and in a different location, near the pyramid of Senusret II in the Fayyum Basin.

When ancient Egyptian embalmers spent seventy days preparing a pharaoh’s body for eternity, they took a sharp bronze hook, inserted it up through the left nostril, smashed the ethmoid bone, and liquefied and drained the human brain onto the floor to be thrown away as useless stuffing. Yet when those exact same priests opened the abdomen to remove the internal organs into canopic jars, they obeyed one absolute, inviolable command: the heart—known in ancient Egyptian as the ib or haty—had to remain untouched and sewn securely in its natural place inside the chest cavity. To the physicians, philosophers, and priests of the Nile, the heart was not merely a muscular pump; it was the physical throne of intelligence, emotion, memory, and the literal moral witness that decided whether a soul lived forever or ceased to exist.

The Ebers Papyrus and the Channels of the Metu

From a purely anatomical and clinical standpoint, ancient Egyptian doctors understood the mechanics of the cardiovascular system centuries before any other civilization on Earth. In the famous Ebers Papyrus (written around 1550 BC, copying much older Old Kingdom medical treatises) and the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, an entire section known as the Treatise on the Heart lays out an empirical observation of the pulse that astonished later Greek visitors.

The Egyptian medical writer opens by stating that the secret of the physician is the knowledge of the heart’s movement. When a doctor places his fingers on the crown of the head, on the back of the neck, on the wrists, on the arms, or on the legs, he is measuring the heart directly, because “the heart speaks out of every vessel of every member.” Egyptian anatomists called this network of radiating tubes the metu—a term that grouped together arteries, veins, tendons, and hollow ducts extending from the heart to every organ in the body. Just as the Nile River branched into irrigation canals to carry life-giving water and silt to every field in Egypt, the heart pumped blood, air, water, and vital energy through the metu to nourish the limbs, while diseases were diagnosed as “floods,” blockages, or sluggishness within the vessels descending from the heart.

Ib vs. Haty: The Seat of Mind, Will, and Creative Thought

While modern Western culture separates the “logical brain” from the “emotional heart,” ancient Egyptian psychology located every single cognitive, intellectual, and emotional faculty inside the heart itself. Interestingly, the Egyptian language used two distinct words for the organ: haty (written with the hieroglyph of a physical animal heart with its attached aorta and pulmonary vessels) referred primarily to the physical muscular organ beating in the chest, whereas ib referred to the metaphysical heart as the seat of consciousness, memory, courage, wisdom, and moral character.

Everyday Egyptian idioms reflected this cardiocentric worldview: a brave man was called “broad of heart,” an impatient or angry man was “short of heart,” a joyful person was “long of heart,” and to forget something was literally to “eat one’s heart.” Even the creation of the universe itself was attributed to the heart in the Memphite Theology inscribed on the Shabaka Stone: the creator god Ptah first conceived the design of every god, human, and object inside his heart (mind) through rational thought, and then spoke their names aloud with his tongue to bring them into physical existence.

The Weighing of the Heart and the Heart Scarab

Because the heart recorded every single thought, word, and action a person committed from birth to death like an incorruptible black box flight recorder, keeping the physical heart inside the mummy was essential for surviving the ultimate trial of the afterlife: the Weighing of the Heart (Psychostasia), detailed in Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead. Guided by the jackal headed god Anubis into the Hall of Two Truths before Osiris and forty two divine judges, the deceased watched as Anubis placed their heart (ib) on one side of a golden balance scale and placed the ostrich feather of Maat—representing cosmic truth, justice, and harmony—on the opposite pan.

If the deceased had lived a virtuous life, the heart balanced perfectly with the feather—being literally “light hearted”—and the soul was welcomed into the eternal Field of Reeds (Aaru). However, if the heart was heavy with greed, cruelty, and lies, the scale tipped downward, and the terrifying composite monster crouching beside the scale—Ammit, the “Devourer of the Dead,” possessing the jaws of a crocodile, the forequarters of a lion, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus—leaped forward and swallowed the heart on the spot, causing the person’s soul to suffer the “second death” and vanish into nonexistence forever. Just in case a person’s own honest heart tried to blurt out embarrassing sins committed on earth during the trial, wealthy Egyptians had a heavy green jasper or basalt stone carved into the shape of a dung beetle—the Heart Scarab—placed directly over the mummy’s chest and inscribed with Spell 30B of the Book of the Dead, begging their own organ: “O my heart which I had from my mother! Do not stand up as a witness against me, do not oppose me in the tribunal, and do not tip the scales against me in the presence of the Keeper of the Balance!”

Although families in ancient Egypt cherished children as both a divine blessing from the gods Hathor and Bes and an essential source of care for parents in old age, the women of the Nile Valley enjoyed a level of legal, financial, and bodily autonomy unmatched anywhere else in the ancient Mediterranean world. Preserved on surviving medical papyri dating back nearly four thousand years to the Middle and New Kingdoms, Egyptian physicians and midwives documented an extensive, surprisingly clinical array of contraceptive prescriptions and early pregnancy tests—combining bizarre animal ingredients with genuine plant biochemistry that anticipated twentieth-century spermicides by millennia.

The Kahun, Ebers, and Ramesseum Medical Papyri

Our knowledge of ancient Egyptian family planning comes not from rumor, but from the oldest surviving gynecological textbooks in human history, unearthed from dry desert towns and tombs:

• The Kahun Gynecological Papyrus (circa 1825 BC): Discovered by Flinders Petrie in 1889 at the pyramid-builders’ town of Lahun during the Twelfth Dynasty, this Middle Kingdom scroll contains the earliest written contraceptive recipes on Earth.
• The Ebers Papyrus (circa 1550 BC): Purchased at Luxor in 1873, this massive sixty-eight-foot medical scroll includes a dedicated gynecological section detailing barrier pessaries and medicated tampons designed to prevent conception for one, two, or three years.
• The Ramesseum, Berlin, and Carlsberg Papyri: Provide additional formulas alongside diagnostic tests for fertility and fetal sex determination.

Acacia Gum and Lactic Acid: The Spermicide That Actually Worked

By far the most scientifically remarkable contraceptive formula in all of antiquity appears in Ebers Papyrus Prescription 783. To prevent a woman from conceiving for one, two, or three years, the physician instructed her to grind together equal parts of tips of the Acacia shrub (Acacia nilotica), ripe dates, and colocynth (bitter desert gourd), blend the paste with raw honey, soak a wad of fibrous plant wool (lint) in the mixture, and insert it deep into the vaginal canal as a medicated tampon.

When twentieth-century biochemists and pharmacologists tested this thirty-five-hundred-year-old Egyptian recipe in the laboratory, they were astonished to discover that it wasn’t mere folk magic—it was a two-pronged chemical and physical spermicide:

1. Lactic Acid Production: When fermented acacia tree gum (gum arabic) breaks down in moisture, it produces lactic acid anhydride, which turns directly into lactic acid—an active chemical ingredient that immobilizes and kills human spermatozoa on contact, and the exact same spermicidal compound used in modern twentieth- and twenty-first-century contraceptive jellies!
2. The Honey and Date Barrier: Raw honey and mashed date paste possess high viscosity and osmotic density, forming a thick, sticky physical barrier plug over the cervix that physically blocks sperm from swimming upward while simultaneously inhibiting bacterial growth.

Crocodile Dung Pessaries and Prolonged Breastfeeding

Alongside the genuinely effective acacia-and-honey tampon, the older Kahun Papyrus (circa 1825 BC) recorded several barrier pessaries mixed from ingredients that sound far less appealing to modern ears: specifically, mixing dried, pulverized crocodile dung with fermented sour milk or mucilage paste, or mixing honey with natural natron salt (sodium carbonate harvested from dry desert lakebeds) to pack against the cervix.

Why on earth would an Egyptian woman use crocodile dung? Religiously, the crocodile was sacred to the powerful god Sobek; practically, dried herbivorous/carnivorous reptile dung mixed with thick sour milk or honey formed a dense, sponge-like physical barrier, and modern researchers note that while natron salt acts as a desiccant and changes local pH levels, fermented sour milk provides another dose of sperm-inhibiting lactic acid. Furthermore, on an everyday demographic level, Egyptian mothers naturally spaced their pregnancies three to four years apart by practicing extended breastfeeding for up to three full years—utilizing natural lactational amenorrhea to suppress ovulation.

The Barley and Emmer Wheat Pregnancy Test

Equally famous in the Berlin and Carlsberg Medical Papyri (circa 1350 BC) was the world’s first home pregnancy test—a diagnostic technique so famous that it was copied centuries later by Hippocrates in Greece and persisted in European medical folklore all the way until the seventeenth century. To find out if a woman was pregnant, she was instructed to urinate every morning for several days onto two small cloth bags filled with seeds: one containing barley and the other containing emmer wheat, mixed with dates and sand.

According to the papyrus, if neither grain sprouted, the woman was not pregnant; if the barley sprouted first, she would give birth to a boy; and if the emmer wheat sprouted first, she would give birth to a girl. In 1963, endocrinologists at a laboratory tested this ancient Egyptian method using real urine samples from pregnant and non-pregnant women—and discovered that while the test could not predict the baby’s sex, pregnant women’s urine caused the grain seeds to sprout seventy percent of the time, whereas urine from non-pregnant women and men never stimulated growth, because elevated levels of estrogens in pregnant urine actively accelerate seed germination!

Each physician in ancient Egypt had a specialty. The Greek historian Herodotus reported from a trip to Egypt:

“Each physician treats one disease, not several; some are physicians for the eyes, others for the head, for teeth, for the abdominal region, for gynecology, or for diseases of uncertain localization.”

Origin of Obstetrics

Min is the god of fertility. Tauret, a goddess with a hybrid body—part hippopotamus, part crocodile—with lion’s paws, protects the mother and child during childbirth. She is supposed to scare away spirits that could harm the child. She is often accompanied by the dwarf god Bes, who has the same function.

The goddess Hathor, the goddess of maternity and fertility, was called upon to assist the child and the mother, through incantations:

“Place barley and wheat in two linen bags with sand and dates; urinate on them every day; if the barley and wheat germinate, she will give birth; if the barley germinates first, it will be a boy; if the wheat germinates first, it will be a girl; if they do not germinate, she will not give birth.

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In a way, an ancient pregnancy test.

But for medical reasoning to be developed, physicians had to get rid of the idea that pregnancy is due to the intervention of supernatural powers, gods, or demons.

In Egyptian papyri, amid conjuring formulas, mythical conceptions, and superstitions, there is an attempt at rationalization:

• one of the Kahun papyri, dating back to the XII dynasty, is a gynecology manual and mentions a disease that devours tissues (cancer);
• Egyptian physicians had noticed the beneficial action of honey in gynecology;
• in the 14th century, condoms were made with animal bladders as a means of birth control.

To give birth, women squat on four ritual bricks, the Meskhenet, and let midwives proceed with childbirth. The placenta is preserved to make medicinal remedies. Women are then secluded for fourteen days to purify themselves, as they are contaminated with their blood and therefore impure. They will then return to see their child.

While popular movies depict ancient Egyptian healers as mystical priests chanting spells inside dark temples, the archaeological and textual record of the Nile Valley reveals a remarkably empirical, scientific tradition of clinical trauma care. Practicing alongside religious rituals for over two millennia, ancient Egyptian surgeons—known as the swnw (pronounced “sou-nou”)—sutured gaping flesh wounds with linen thread, cauterized bleeding arteries, reduced dislocated shoulders using techniques identical to modern orthopedics, and compiled the oldest rational surgical textbook in human history.

The Edwin Smith Papyrus: The World’s First Trauma Textbook

The single greatest monument to ancient Egyptian surgery is the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, a fifteen-foot-long scroll written around 1600 BC that linguistic analysis indicates was copied from an even older Old Kingdom original dating back to the pyramid-building era of 2600 BC (often attributed by historians to the circle of the polymath architect and physician Imhotep). Unlike other medical papyri that mix herbal remedies with magic spells, the forty-eight trauma cases in the Edwin Smith Papyrus are almost 100% rational, anatomical, and clinical—containing only a single incantation among four dozen surgical injuries.

Organized logically from the top of the skull down through the face, throat, collarbone, chest, and spine, each of the forty-eight cases follows the exact four-step protocol of modern emergency medicine:

1. Title and Examination: Direct physical palpation of the wound, checking the patient’s pulse, asking the patient to move their neck or limbs, and observing neurological signs (remarkably providing the first description in human history of the cerebral cortex, the meninges membranes, cerebrospinal fluid, and how a crushed skull on one side paralyzes the opposite side of the body).
2. Diagnosis and the Three Verdicts: After examining the injury, the Egyptian surgeon was required to pronounce one of three honest clinical verdicts to the patient:
   • “An ailment which I will treat” (a curable injury with a favorable prognosis).
   • “An ailment with which I will contend” (an uncertain, serious injury where the surgeon will fight to save the patient).
   • “An ailment not to be treated” (a hopeless, fatal injury—such as a crushed cervical vertebra with spinal cord severance—where only palliative comfort could be offered).
3. Treatment: Mechanical reduction of fractures, stitching, splinting, and wound dressings.

The Wall Relief of Kom Ombo and Bronze Surgical Instruments

Carved onto an interior stone enclosure wall at the Ptolemaic Temple of Kom Ombo in Upper Egypt—and corroborated by real bronze and copper tool kits unearthed inside the tombs of Sixth Dynasty physicians like Qar at Saqqara—is a detailed visual inventory of approximately forty surgical instruments used in antiquity:

• Scalpels and Knives: Razor-sharp blades crafted first from freshly knapped obsidian and flint (which actually hold a sharper microscopic edge than steel) as well as hardened copper and bronze scalpels.
• Forceps, Tweezers, and Bone Saws: Pincers for extracting arrowheads and bone splinters from deep wounds, hooked retractors to hold open incisions, metallic probes, cupping vessels, dental pliers, and fine-toothed bronze saws.
• Sutures and Adhesive Linen Tape: The Edwin Smith Papyrus contains the earliest reference in world history to closing a gaping wound with surgical stitches (sutures) using bone or bronze needles and linen thread, alongside an ingenious non-invasive alternative for facial cuts so they wouldn’t leave ugly scars: drawing the edges of a split eyebrow or nose together using strips of linen tape coated in sticky acacia gum resin!
• Fire Drills for Cauterization: To stop severe hemorrhaging when excising surface cysts or tumors, surgeons heated bronze blades or rotated wooden fire-drills directly against the bleeding vessels to cauterize the tissue.

Raw Meat, Honey Antiseptics, and Skull Trepanation

Once a surgical wound was stitched or set inside rigid splints made of padded bark, wood, or cartonnage linen stiffened with plaster, Egyptian post-operative care prevented deadly bacterial infection through a two-day dressing regimen that modern microbiologists praise. On the very first day of a fresh wound, the surgeon bound a slice of fresh raw meat over the cut—providing natural clotting enzymes (thromboplastin) that stopped bleeding quickly.

From the second day onward, the wound was dressed daily with a salve of raw honey and animal fat (lint). Because pure honey is hyperosmolar (sucking moisture out of bacterial cells by osmosis), acidic, and naturally generates trace amounts of hydrogen peroxide when diluted with body fluids, no common bacteria could survive inside the bandage. Bioarchaeologists examining thousands of ancient Egyptian mummies and skeletons have confirmed how often patients survived major interventions: showing cleanly healed amputations of forearms and toes fitted with functional wooden prosthetics, skillfully set femur fractures, and even rare cases of trepanation—drilling or scraping a circular hole into the living skull to relieve fatal intracranial pressure after a battlefield mace blow, with smooth bone regrowth around the edges proving the patient lived for years after leaving the surgeon’s table.

More than three thousand five hundred years ago, when a sick citizen of Thebes or Memphis visited a physician (swnw), they did not walk away with vague folkloric advice; they received a meticulously measured prescription written down on papyrus, specifying the exact plant, mineral, or animal ingredients, the method of compounding, and the route of administration. Preserved across a dozen major medical scrolls—led by the monumental Ebers Papyrus (circa 1550 BC), which contains over 877 distinct drug prescriptions using more than seven hundred raw ingredients—the pharmacopoeia of ancient Egypt was the most advanced pharmaceutical archive of the Bronze Age world, directly inspiring the later medical traditions of Hippocrates, Dioscorides, and Galen.

Precision Compounding: Liquid Vehicles and Dosage Forms

Unlike casual folk herbalism where a patient simplemente chews a handful of leaves, ancient Egyptian pharmacists—who worked inside specialized temple laboratories called the Per-Ankh (“House of Life”)—understood that the chemical solubility and bodily absorption of an active drug depend entirely on the liquid vehicle used to extract it.

Every Egyptian prescription Carefully matched its active botanical or mineral powder with a specific carrier base according to whether the compound was water-soluble, fat-soluble, or alcohol-soluble:

• Water, Milk, and Sweet Beer: Fermented barley beer—particularly a high-alcohol variety called “sweet beer”—was used across hundreds of prescriptions both to extract alcohol-soluble plant alkaloids and to mask the bitter taste of medicines for children.
• Wine and Vinegar: Used for astringent washes and dissolving resins like frankincense and myrrh.
• Fats, Oils, and Raw Honey: Goose fat, ox tallow, hippopotamus fat, castor oil, and pure Nile bee honey served as the base for topical ointments, burn salves, eye drops, and swallowable pills.

Furthermore, the Egyptians invented virtually every modern pharmaceutical delivery method: oral potions, molded honey-paste pills, gargles, therapeutic inhalations (throwing herbal resins onto red-hot stones and breathing the steam through a hollow reed tube!), eye drops applied with smooth wooden or hematite rods, skin poultices, vaginal pessaries, and medicated rectal suppositories and enemas.

Key Botanical Drugs Validated by Modern Pharmacology

While Egyptian papyri included sympathetic magic ingredients like lizard blood or fly specks alongside prayers to Isis and Thoth, modern pharmacognosists testing the core botanical staples of the Egyptian pharmacopoeia have confirmed that a remarkable percentage of their plants contained potent, clinically active molecules:

1. Willow Bark and Leaves (Salix): Prescribed in the Ebers and Edwin Smith papyri as an anti-inflammatory poultice for aching joints and infected wounds. Willow bark is rich in salicin, which the human body metabolizes into salicylic acid—the direct natural chemical ancestor of modern aspirin!
2. Pomegranate Root Bark (Punica granatum): Steeped in water and drunk by patients suffering from intestinal tapeworms. Modern chemistry confirmed that pomegranate bark contains high concentrations of the alkaloid pelletierine, which paralyzes the muscular suckers of tapeworms so they detach from the intestinal wall and are expelled.
3. Senna Pods, Castor Oil, and Aloe Vera: Because Egyptian medical theory believed that internal diseases were caused by putrefying food residue (wekhedu) trapped in the lower bowel, physicians prescribed senna pods (containing sennosides, still sold in every modern pharmacy on Earth as a laxative) and pressed castor bean oil, while applying fresh Aloe vera gel to soothe skin burns and ulcers.
4. Khella (Ammi visnaga) and Blue Lotus: Seeds of the Nile tooth-pick plant (Ammi visnaga) were brewed to relax painful kidney-stone spasms and asthma—leading twentieth-century pharmacologists in Cairo to isolate the active compound khellin, which served as the chemical blueprint for modern asthma inhalers (sodium cromoglycate) and the heart-rhythm drug amiodarone!
5. Coriander, Cumin, Garlic, and Juniper Berries: Cloves of raw garlic (found preserved inside the tomb of Tutankhamun) were given daily to pyramid laborers to boost stamina and fight respiratory infections via antimicrobial allicin, while juniper berries and coriander calmed digestive gas and acted as diuretics.

Mineral Chemistry: Malachite Eye Paint That Prevented Blindness

Nowhere was Egyptian pharmaceutical chemistry more brilliant than in their signature green and black cosmetic eye paints (kohl and udju), worn by every man, woman, and child along the Nile. For centuries, historians assumed the heavy black galena (lead sulfide) and green malachite (copper carbonate) eyeliner was purely aesthetic or used to reduce sun glare.

In 2010, however, French analytical chemists at the Louvre Museum and CNRS analyzed residue inside fifty-two ancient Egyptian cosmetic pots and discovered that Egyptian pharmacists spent thirty days synthesizing rare lead-chloride compounds (laurionite and phosgenite) that do not even occur naturally in Egypt. When a tiny trace of these lead and copper salts touched the tear film of the human eye, it stimulated the eye’s immune cells to produce a 240-percent surge in nitric oxide—turbocharging the immune response to kill the bacteria carried by Nile floodwaters that caused blinding trachoma and conjunctivitis, turning everyday Egyptian makeup into a preventative public-health triumph.

The Ebers Papyrus is one of the oldest known medical treatises; it dates back to the 16th century BCE, during the reign of Amenhotep I. It’s the most important text for understanding ancient Egyptian medicine. It appears as a list of remedy recipes with a brief indication of the ailment to be treated. It’s difficult to interpret because some medical terms remain mysterious and most substances have not been identified. It’s often regarded as the emergence of medical and pharmacological thought in a religious or magical universe.

Discovery, Translations, and Preservation

The Ebers Papyrus was part of a clandestine find under poorly known circumstances. It was likely a chest or a small library from the Ramesseum, also containing the Edwin Smith Papyrus and the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus.

In 1862, in Luxor, the lot came into the possession of Edwin Smith, who kept the Smith papyrus for himself and sold the other two. The Ebers Papyrus was purchased by the German Egyptologist Georg Moritz Ebers on behalf of the University of Leipzig library.

It was Ebers who named and published the papyrus in 1875. It’s a facsimile reproduction. Ebers didn’t attempt a translation, but provided an introduction with comments and an Egyptian-Latin glossary.

Early Translations

In 1890, Heinrich Joachim, a physician from Berlin, provided a rather controversial German translation: Papyros Ebers. Das älteste Buch über Heilkunde.

In 1937, Bendix Ebbell published a new translation, aiming to give precise identifications to the names of diseases, plants, and minerals used.

From 1954 to 1963, under the direction of Hermann Grapow, the Ebers Papyrus was part of the large German edition of Egyptian medical texts in eight volumes, the Grundrisse der Medizin der alten Ägypter (often abbreviated in French as Grundriss).

The first French translation (partial translation) was by Gustave Lefebvre, who provided excerpts in his Essay on Egyptian Medicine in the Pharaonic Period (1956).

In 1987, Paul Ghalioungui published a new English translation.

Preservation

In Leipzig, in the 19th century, the Ebers manuscript was cut into twenty-nine pieces to be placed under glass. A transcription from hieratic to hieroglyphs was published in 1913 by Walter Wreszinski, which divided the one hundred and ten pages of the original manuscript into 877 numbered sections.

The original manuscript is complete, in perfect condition, written in exceptional hieratic quality, and easily readable from beginning to end.

During World War II, the manuscript was protected in the Deutsche Bank vault in Leipzig, then moved and safely housed at Rochlitz Castle (Rochlitz, sixty kilometers southeast of Leipzig). According to an anonymous testimony published in 1951, when the manuscript was found in 1945, it was not inside the castle but hidden in the kennel under a pile of rubbish. Seventeen pages out of one hundred and ten were lost and four were damaged (due to the broken glass protection).

The Ebers Papyrus is still preserved in the University Library of Leipzig. Like all papyri, the greatest threats are excessive light and humidity.

It’s one of the longest written documents found in ancient Egypt. The scroll consists of one hundred and ten pages (columns); it’s about twenty meters long by thirty centimeters wide, in forty-eight sheets of about forty centimeters long, glued in such a way that the right edge of one sheet covers the left edge of the other, with the text read from right to left.

Titles and quantities are written in red ink, the rest in black. The author is unknown, but the text appears to have been written by a single highly skilled scribe. There are no spaces between words (usual practice), a few mistakes, and some missing words (omitted) have been added in the margin; their placement in the text is indicated by a red X.

It’s the most important medical work from ancient Egypt because it’s a guide presenting the entirety of pathology for a physician in their daily practice, with corresponding prescriptions. “Nowhere else will you find as much information to define the medical thought of the time.”

Dating

The Ebers Papyrus gathers texts from different dates and origins, which can be divided into groups bringing together several successive paragraphs. It appears as a compilation of older texts to which “new recipes” are added. This represents a long tradition of empirical knowledge and observations.

It was mainly written in the 16th century, around 1550 BC, or during the reign of Amenhotep I. Some Egyptologists give more recent dates and cite instead the reign of Amenhotep III in the 14th or 15th century (variable date according to Egyptologists).

Furthermore, the Ebers Papyrus contains information on the date of Ramses II’s succession to the throne of Egypt. Ramses II succeeded his father around 1304 or 1279 – 1278. The date varies depending on how the Sothic date of this papyrus is interpreted.

The most recent dating is based on the style of writing, comparison with other similar manuscripts, and the presence of a calendar on the back mentioning the ninth year of the reign of Amenhotep I (late 16th century BCE). A carbon-14 dating, conducted in 2014, confirms these data (around 1500 BCE).

Contents

The Ebers Papyrus contains exactly 877 formulas (recipes organized into paragraphs from Eb.1 to Eb. 877). It doesn’t present itself as a modern treaty but rather as a formulary (a list of prescriptions) where diseases are most often named or described concisely rather than diagnosed.

It includes a prologue (Eb.1 to Eb.3) of magical protection formulas aimed at protecting the physician from the demons that cause diseases.

From Eb.4, the actual medical compendium begins, which can be divided into thirty-three groups, each consisting of a list of recipes for the same ailment or type of ailment. In the following presentation, the term “large group” can mean both the length of the text and its importance for understanding Egyptian medicine.

Large Group 1 (Eb.4 to 187) deals with diseases inside the body, naming the main causes and corresponding recipes. It includes diarrhea, intestinal worms, and pains and burns during defecation.

Large Group 2 (Eb. 188 to Eb. 220) is devoted to diseases of the “entrance/opening of the inside-ib,” meaning the exits of all the body’s ducts connecting the organs (such as the aerodigestive entrances).

Group 3 (Eb. 221 to Eb. 241) deals with diseases associated with the heart-haty; Group 4 (Eb.242 to Eb. 260) with protective ointments and diseases of the head; Group 5 (Eb. 261 to Eb. 283) with urinary conditions; Group 6 (Eb. 284 to Eb. 293) concerns nutrition.

Group 7 (Eb. 294 to Eb. 304) is intended to combat setet (pathogenic beings circulating in the body’s ducts); Group 8 (Eb. 305 to Eb. 325) against the secretion-seryt causing cough; and Group 9 (Eb. 326 to Eb. 335) against parasites-gehou responsible for wheezing.

Large Group 10 (Eb. 336 to Eb. 431) deals with eye diseases.

Group 11 (Eb. 432 to Eb. 436) deals with bites; Group 12 (Eb. 437 to Eb. 476) with hair care; Group 13 (Eb. 477 to Eb. 481) with liver diseases; Group 14 (Eb. 482 to Eb. 514) with burns, blows, and scars; and Group 15 (Eb. 515 to Eb. 542) with wounds and hemorrhages.

Group 16 (Eb. 543 to Eb. 550) deals with pathological formations and secretions; Group 17 (Eb.551 to Eb. 555) with abscesses-benout; Group 18 (Eb.556 to Eb. 591) with swellings-chefout; and Group 19 (Eb. 592 to Eb. 602) with blood that eats and substances that corrode.

Group 20 (Eb. 603 to Eb. 615) is dedicated to leg conditions; Group 21 (Eb. 616 to Eb. 626) to fingers and toes.

Large Group 22 (Eb. 627 to Eb. 696) concerns the ducts-met.

Group 23 (Eb. 697 to Eb. 704) deals with tongue conditions; Group 24 (Eb. 705 to Eb. 738) with skin and body surface; Group 25 (Eb. 739 to Eb. 749) with teeth.

Group 26 (Eb. 750 to Eb. 756) deals with pestilential diseases and demons; Group 27 (Eb. 757 to Eb. 760) with the impact of the right side by the substance-rouyt; Group 28 (Eb. 761 to Eb. 763) impacts by the exudate-rech.

Group 29 (Eb. 764 to Eb. 782) deals with ear conditions.

Group 30 (Eb. 783 to Eb. 839) is devoted to remedies for women.

Group 31 (Eb. 840 to Eb. 853) concerns remedies for the household (protecting against undesirable animals).

Large Group 32 (Eb. 854 to Eb. 856) consists of the “Treatise on the Heart” and the treatise on oukhedou (circulating pathogenic substances).

Large Group 33 (Eb. 857 to Eb. 877) represents the “Treatise on Tumors.”

Magical Protections

The prologue of the Ebers Papyrus includes several protection rituals. These are invocations or prayers to be recited before touching the patient, applying medication, a bandage, or removing such a bandage.

These texts are written in the first person; they have been interpreted as being spoken by the patient or by the physician on behalf of the patient. However, according to Bardinet, they were pronounced by the physician for his own protection.

The physician invokes protective gods, mainly Ra, Isis, and Horus, against malevolent (demonic) or opposing forces (the god Seth). According to Bardinet, the physician seeks to magically identify with Horus in his mythical struggle against Seth by directly addressing Isis, Horus’s protective mother. “Daily medical activity will ultimately reproduce the constantly renewed conflict between Horus and Seth, between the organized world and the disorganized and wild world.”

The patient is also assimilated to Horus, but to Horus as a child incapable of defending himself, while the physician is the adult and active Horus. Thus, the physician and his patient are close and fight together. According to the Grundriss, the physician is the magical substitute for the patient; Bardinet disagrees with this interpretation, as “the physician never takes on the patient’s illness himself.”

Magical rituals are found in other parts of the papyrus, particularly in difficult or dangerous situations. These prayers refer to mythical battles, repeated daily, such as those of the crew of the solar barge. The physician can also be aggressive, casting curses against demons and malevolent beings to disrupt their harmful world.

Medical Knowledge

Diverse Approaches

The various translations of the Ebers Papyrus imply diverse interpretations, particularly regarding anatomical and pathological denominations, names of animals, plants, and minerals. Not all Egyptian terms have corresponding modern terms. Early versions, like Ebbell’s 1937 version, which claim to provide precise identifications for each Egyptian term, are considered outdated by modern Egyptologists. These older versions are still quite often referenced.

Conversely, and for the same reason, authors like Gustave Lefebvre considered Egyptian knowledge to be imprecise or undeveloped. According to Bardinet, this knowledge is simply different and must be studied differently depending on its context. Bardinet gives an example, concerning anatomy, of the current technical vocabulary of butchery (such as beef cutting), which indeed represents precise knowledge adapted to practical use.

Another approach is to seek analogies between Egyptian and Greek medicine, with the idea of an influence of the former on the latter, which remains hypothetical. Greek concepts (such as phlegm, miasma, etc.) are then used to approach Egyptian terms. According to Bardinet, the flaws are the same as those of modern identifications: Egyptian medical thought is diluted in a context that is not its own, appearing as approximate or even childish.

The medical interpretations of the Ebers Papyrus are made for two different purposes: “understanding from the outside,” approaching the pathological reality of ancient Egypt (by comparing the text with other historical data and current knowledge), and “understanding from the inside,” approaching Egyptian medical thought (in this case, exact modern diagnosis is less important).

According to Bardinet, one must not confuse the fact that a situation may, more or less plausibly, correspond to a modern diagnosis (such as leprosy, cancer, myocardial infarction, etc.) with the false idea that Egyptian physicians already had modern ideas. Here, the search for and statement of a precise retrospective diagnosis introduce foreign ideas into Egyptian medicine.

Anatomical and Physiological Representations

The constituent elements of the body are not considered to have intrinsic properties; they are subject to higher forces of divine origin. The elements of the body (substances, liquids, breath, etc.) come from a primordial liquid universe, the Noun. All gods and beings of creation originate from it, through processes of generation, life, and death. These are processes of binding, nurturing, and generating (nourishing blood, milk, semen, etc.), opposed to processes of dilution, blocking, or destruction (blood that eats, corrosive substances, etc.). These processes themselves are considered to be living beings.

In the Ebers Papyrus, the main concepts concerning the structure and functioning of the body are the heart-haty (the heart organ and its major vessels, which are central and anterior) and the interior-ib (which fills the shet, the body cavity corresponding to the thoracic and abdominal cavities, and extends into the limbs). The heart-haty is the seat of consciousness, of the will that carries out desires, closely related to the interior-ib, the seat of sensations and emotions.

The entrance/opening of the ib, or ro-ib, represents the stomach, the upper digestive tract. At is called any part of the body that has a name. According to Grapow and Lefebvre, embalmers and physicians had about a hundred words to designate the different parts of the body.

The body is traversed by ducts-met with their own walls through which bodily fluids, nourishing substances, and vital breath circulate. In ancient Egypt, the human body “is an animated body and not an incarnated soul.”

Main Pathogenic Entities

Disease is linked to direct divine interventions. It most often comes from the outside, in the form of a demon, a dead person (deceased), a harmful breath, or “animated substance-beings” that enter the body, particularly through its orifices.

Disease manifests as displacements and false paths, various obstacles to the natural circulation of bodily fluids and secretions. Disease is a struggle between the animating breaths of binding and formation and the disruptive breaths of dissolution and disorganization. This struggle often takes place in the ducts-met, which can be too rigid, blocked, worn, or distended.

According to Bardinet, this divine or magical context did not prevent the emergence of medical reflection, based on daily observation of repetitive phenomena, in search of a “logic” that combines facts (pathological reality) with medical speculation, to build a practice. “We have here writings composed by physicians, for the use of other physicians.”

The Ebers Papyrus mentions four major circulating pathogenic factors:

• The âaâ is a bodily fluid that seems to refer to the water of the Nile; like it, it is a fertilizing liquid, a seed. In pathological cases, âaâ is a fluid emitted by the bodies of demons, capable of transforming into other “parasitic” substances (living pathogenic substances).
• Setet are living decomposition substances that are evacuated through the lower abdomen but can cause pain, vomiting, and discharge from the orifices of the head by their death or blockage.
• The oukhedou would be the pathogenic emanation of the vital force of excrement. It is a bodily substance that opposes nourishing blood and can associate with it, to reverse it into eating blood or blood that eats. Oukhedou are the origin of pus formation and putrid phenomena.

The ouhaou are believed to originate from the oukhedou, coming from the inside they manifest on the outside of the body, notably through skin inflammation.

The Treatise of the Heart

The papyrus contains a “treatise of the heart” represented by the passage Eb. 854 to Eb. 856. It begins with three successive titles: “The Physician’s Secret. Knowing the Movements of the Heart-haty. Knowing the Heart-haty.”

Interpretations differ among authors. For some ancient authors, it would be a treatise dealing with anatomy (knowing the heart) and physiology (knowing the movements and functioning of the heart). These authors note that the heart is the center of blood irrigation, with vessels attached to all parts of the body, and that the Egyptian physician palpates the body parts and ducts-met to examine the beats, take the pulse, or even count them.

For other authors (modern ones), it is not only about the heart organ in the modern sense, but about an Egyptian heart-haty capable of moving (changing position). It would then be a treatise on medical diagnosis aimed at establishing the position and involvement of the heart-haty. Pulse-taking is also recognized, but it is not about counting it but about “taking a measure” (evaluating) a diseased state. Palpation is part of a qualitative overall assessment aimed at assessing the nature and extent of the ailment throughout the body.

The heart is described in its relationships with the interior-ib. In its normal state, it is in a perfect and stable position on its fixed support (the meket); in its diseased state, it can start dancing, fluttering its wings, banging against the walls, or falling by sinking into the depth. The heart-haty “speaks in front of each conduit-met of every part of the body.”

This treatise lists ducts-met that start from the head orifices to reach the heart-haty. From there, they go towards the inside (interior-ib) and the four limbs, to gather at the anus. The “treatise of the heart” would not really be a “cardiology book” but rather a “book of paths” of pathogenic entities.

The Treatise of Tumors

This treatise is represented by the passages Eb. 857 to Eb. 877. “It is one of the greatest texts of Egyptian medicine and also one of the most difficult texts to interpret.” It establishes a kind of differential diagnosis between different types of abscesses and tumors based on their content: those filled with pus and those filled with something else. Tumors are distinguished by their color, firmness (hard, soft…), mobility or fluctuation (literally “rolling under the fingers”), heat, and presence of pain.

Depending on the cases, the treatment consists of ointment, surgery (“treatment with a knife”), or therapeutic abstention (“prepare nothing against it”).

Swellings and tumors filled with pus are called henhenet swellings. Pus is produced internally by a corrosive substance called oukhedou that gathers externally in a “pouch” (âat). The pus derives from an upward secretion from digestion (what was intended for the formation of flesh has been transformed into pus).

Other tumors are said to be filled with “fat,” “superficial flesh,” “like something swollen with air,” liquid, or various substances. For example, tumors filled with oukhedou manifest at the extremities of the body, those of substance-sefet refer to a tar of vegetable origin, evoking necrosis or gangrene.

The most feared tumors are “those formed by the god Khonsou.” The text indicates “it is something bewitched that is before your face,” presenting itself in multiple pouches and producing secretions—shepaou—against which nothing can be done. The papyrus ends on the size-ânout “formed by the massacres of the god Khonsou.” When it is multiple and hot, nothing can be done; otherwise, it can be cured.

Pathological Interpretations

The Ebers Papyrus mainly consists of a list of formulas, and most of the time, the conciseness of the text mentioning ailments hardly allows for retrospective diagnoses. Most interpretations are based on those of Ebbell in 1937, but several are no longer accepted or considered barely plausible. As a general rule, hypotheses are accepted when they are compatible with other historical data, such as the paleopathology of Egyptian mummies.

Digestive and Thoracic Ailments

The medical compilation of the Ebers papyrus begins with what appears to be digestive pathology: diarrhea, including bloody diarrhea, constipation, and various obstructions… A large place is given to ano-rectal diseases. The mention of what could be stomach cancer is doubtful, while the pictures of cholecystitis, intestinal obstructions, and digestive hemorrhages appear plausible. Several recipes “to treat the liver” are listed, but without any corresponding clinical description.

This digestive pathology can be associated with a thoracic pathology represented by “forgetfulness, fleeing, or stabbing of the heart,” which would represent palpitations and precordial pain. A passage (Eb. 191) has been interpreted as angina pectoris, a manifestation of myocardial infarction.

“If you proceed to examine a man afflicted at the entrance of the interior-ib; and he is affected in the arm, chest, and (on) one side of the entrance of the interior-ib; and people say about it; ‘it’s the (disease) green!’ (= popular diagnosis) You shall say about it: ‘It is (something) that has entered the mouth, it is a dead person who travels through it.’”

According to Bardinet, the description may correspond, but the Egyptian author has no idea of a heart disease: it is a problem of a conduit traversed by a dead person. The recipe given aims to strengthen the patient and evacuate this pain through the anus.

Urinary and Parasitic Afflictions

Urinary pathology is represented by the substance-chepen which causes pus in the urine. Other disorders appear to be urinary retention, enuresis, and cystitis. Passages concerning “an overflow of urine that escapes” have raised the possibility of polyuria due to diabetes mellitus.

The disease by âaâ with red urine would be bilharzia. The importance of the condition is indicated by the number of recipes (about twenty). The presence of the disease in ancient Egypt is certain and extremely widespread; it was detected in nearly half of the tested mummies, but it is difficult to know what the Egyptians knew about it. According to Bardinet, the frequency of parasitic hematuria indicated less of a disease than a particular human type, those inhabited by or in relation to a god, here the god Seth, a reference to the color red.

Several intestinal worms are mentioned, including the ver-hefat, the ver-pened… Their exact identification remains debated, but given other historical data, they could represent the hookworm, the roundworm, or the Taenia saginata.

Furthermore, the mention of dracunculiasis is possible, by combining two passages (Eb.617 and Eb. 876), but more by its demonstrated existence in ancient Egypt than by the clarity of the text. According to Bardinet, Eb. 617 would be a myiasis problem, and the “7 knots” of Eb. 876 a magical conjuration, rather than an allusion to traditional treatment (see section examples of recipes).

Ocular and ENT Afflictions

An important passage is dedicated to eye diseases: about a hundred recipes are presented as intended to combat the agents of these diseases. According to Bardinet, it is always difficult to match Egyptian words with ophthalmological reality (modern terms), but the Egyptians took note of what they could observe in the eyes (water, pus, blood, harmful substances, harmful beings…). Commentators have recognized conjunctivitis, blepharitis, styes, ectropion, chalazion, corneal opacity, etc.

Cataracts would be referred to as “water rising in the eyes”, on the grounds that the Latins used the term suffusio to designate it, but cataract surgery is not mentioned (it was introduced in Egypt in the Hellenistic period).

A passage indicating “uterine secretions in the eyes” has been interpreted as a gonococcal infection (gonococcal iritis), which has been contested by others, with historians disagreeing on the presence of this condition in antiquity.

On the other hand, manifestations indicating trachoma appear plausible, as its historical character and widespread occurrence in pharaonic Egypt are widely accepted, notably as a leading cause of blindness. There are many Egyptian representations of blind musicians, especially harpists, whose eye is depicted by a line or whose eyeball lacks an iris.

The fact that recipes may contain beef liver (vitamin A) would indicate a treatment for night blindness.

Afflictions by exudate-rech would represent ENT conditions, as it makes the “seven holes of the head” (mouth, nostrils, eyes, and ears) painful, which suggests sinusitis, rhinitis, otitis, etc. Deafness is attributed to a cutting demon or heseq, that interrupts the hearing conduits.

Passages dedicated to mouth and dental conditions do not propose an ordered classification of lesions, but they are varied enough to see a set of periodontal diseases (dental caries and wear, abscesses and oral infections, gingivitis…) sometimes related to a “corrosive substance”.

In such a context, the Ebers Papyrus has the reputation of being one of the first texts in history to describe scurvy. However, this diagnosis remains improbable, as it is not confirmed by paleopathology data. Periodontal diseases found (Egyptian mummies) are common but attributed to an alteration of oral flora or to the poor quality of antiquity flours that contained mineral particles from millstones or stone mortars (sometimes the addition was deliberate to obtain a finer flour). Consumers of these flours were exposed to premature tooth wear.

Gynaecological Conditions

The Ebers Papyrus gives considerable attention to menstrual disorders: amenorrhea and dysmenorrhea. Uterine prolapse is mentioned. Recipes are provided for inflammatory conditions of the vulva, vaginitis, and endometritis. Burning sensations or odor perception have been subjected to microbiological interpretations. Commentators have noted the possibility of uterine cancer, which is likely but difficult to confirm. The same applies to breast cancer, for which there is no clear mention.

A contraceptive recipe in the form of a pessary is given “to not have a child for one, two, or three years” (Eb. 783).

Around twenty other preparations (vaginal preparations, suppositories, fumigations, etc.) are intended to facilitate childbirth and placental expulsion. Egyptian women gave birth on a “birthing brick.” Recipe Eb. 789 specifies that the medication should impregnate “the brick lined with fabric.” According to Bardinet, “this little text teaches us in passing that they had thought to stuff it.”

Other recipes address breast conditions and breastfeeding problems. A magical formula, called the “conjuration of the breast,” is provided (Eb. 811): “This is the breast where Isis was affected in the marsh of Chemmis when she gave birth to Shou and Tefnout. What she did was conjure the breasts with the iar plant, with a pod of the seneb plant, with the bekat part of the reed—all this to drive away the action of a dead man, a dead woman, and so on. This will be prepared in the form of a band turned to the left, which will be placed where the action of the dead man or woman is (with the following words): Do not cause evacuation! Do not produce substances that corrode! Do not produce blood! Be careful that darkness does not develop against humans! Words are to be said about [each of the ingredients already mentioned] and about the band turned to the left, to which seven knots are made.”

Children are rarely mentioned. There are predictions about the fate of the newborn such as “If one hears its plaintive voice, it means that it will die. If it places its face toward the ground, it also means that it will die” (Eb. 839). A recipe is given against incessant crying and screaming (Eb. 782).

There is also a recipe for bleeding after circumcision (see the recipe example section). The mummy of Prince Sipaari or Ahmose-Pairy (New Kingdom) at the age of five or six, bore traces of circumcision.

Tumors and Swellings

The treatise on tumors has been widely interpreted. Tumors related to the conduits-met would be aneurysms. The authors propose diagnoses for each paragraph: scrofula, inguinal hernia, varicose veins, cystic tumor, polypoid tumor, etc. The presence of cancer or neoplastic tumors can be indirectly deduced, but there is no clear indication of malignancy, except for the tumors of the god Khonsou.

States of liquid swelling, more or less generalized, have been interpreted as equivalents to the historical diagnosis of dropsy (obsolete medical term) corresponding to edemas or effusions (for example, ascites) related to states of heart, liver, or kidney failure, or parasitic or malnutrition-related conditions.

The swelling-ânout by “massacre of the god Khonsou” would be a mention of leprosy; this diagnosis, proposed by Ebbell in 1937, is no longer accepted by more modern authors by comparison with other historical data, particularly paleopathology.

Pestilential and Other Afflictions

The pestilences occurring at certain times are attributed to demons-nesyt or “a morbid breath that passes.” The Ebers Papyrus offers protection recipes, such as this one (Eb. 756): “Other (remedy): testicles of a newborn donkey. It will be finely ground, put in wine, and drunk by the man. Then he (the demon-nesyt) must immediately flee.” Here, the donkey would be a Sethian animal, whose testicles represent the formidable seed of the god who drives away demons.

Several inflammatory skin conditions are mentioned under the term, among others, kakaout. This term has persisted in Coptic to mean “pustule, blister.”  Some authors relate it to the Arabic kalkal, “to swell, to fill with air.”

These conditions have been interpreted as erysipelas (streptococcal infection) and anthrax (staphylococcal infection). Others have also seen herpes, shingles, smallpox, etc. All of these diagnoses are considered “provisional suggestions.”

Furthermore, protective ointments to cure headaches and prevent relapses suggest the existence of migraines. Tremors are attributed to substances-setet or substances-daout that block the conduits-met. A recipe for finger tremor aims to “drive away (the substances that cause) the tremor found in the fingers”.

Mental Afflictions

Mental disorders are mentioned in the “Book of Hearts,” such as deafness and pathological anger due to “sagging of the conduits-met,” or wear of these conduits with age, which has been interpreted as depression, dementia, or Ménière’s disease. These mentions suggest that the Egyptians did not make a fundamental distinction between mental and physical illnesses.

Pharmacopoeia

Difficulties

The Ebers Papyrus mentions several hundred substances, but for modern Egyptologists, 70 to 80% of these ingredients have not been identified. Therefore, reproducing the prescriptions is very difficult. Similarly, this lack of exact determination hardly allows for deducing the presumed mode of action (pharmacological reality in the modern sense).

The Egyptian pharmacopoeia of the time used mineral, plant, and animal substances, whose denominations do not necessarily correspond to a modern equivalent. For example, for plant substances, the Egyptians did not have the modern notion of species. A plant recognized by the Egyptians is a plant integrated into a “phytosociological unit” corresponding to a particular use, or to a different knowledge (plant categories, or elements of plants, specific to the Egyptians). In the case of gum and resin names, modern Egyptologists have abandoned the idea that an Egyptian name designates a single substance and its producer. The Egyptians were not seeking a “botanical origin” but “qualities” corresponding to their “phytoreligious” beliefs.

Substances more or less identified

Among the identified substances, the most frequently mentioned minerals are clay, copper, galena, malachite, natron, ochers, and salt (terrestrial and marine).

The most commonly identified plants are: acacia, wheat, spelt, barley, fava bean, juniper berries, frankincense, barley, pyrethrum, castor oil plant, reed, willow, sycamore, valerian… There are also vegetables (garlic, celery, peas, edible tuber, lotus…), fruits (date, fig, jujube, grape…), and spices (coriander, cumin…). The Ebers Papyrus mentions many derivative products (beers, wine, lees, oils, flours and breads, gums and resins, mucilages…).

Expressions such as “snake wood,” “image of Horus,” “image of Seth,” “baboon hair,” “mouse tail”… are names of unidentified plants (the text mentioning leaf or root).

Animal substances are represented by products such as bone marrow or teeth; fat, liver, or testicle; blood, urine, semen, or milk; bile and excrement, etc. They come from mammals, the most frequently mentioned being the donkey, cat, goat, deer, gazelle, hippopotamus, pig, mouse, and bull; for birds, it is the ostrich, swallow, and vulture; snakes, lizards, crocodiles, and turtles are mentioned, as well as fish and frogs. The Egyptians also used flies, beetles, and scorpions. Honey occupies a very important place.

Logic of use

The first commentators distinguished in the Egyptian pharmacopoeia what was “demonic” or “excremental,” belonging to a “barbaric imagination” of magicians, and active plant substances belonging to medical knowledge. Their association would be explained thus: “Respect for tradition, customer habits are partially the cause.” According to Gustave Lefebvre, “The doctors, moreover, must have given preference to the remedies of their own composition, which had at least the merit of not being repugnant or ludicrous.”

According to Bardinet, Egyptian recipes must be approached as a whole. Far from being absurd or contradictory, they present internal coherence—a logic based on presumed causes. It becomes possible to speak of medical reasoning based on “physiological considerations” (the traditional conception of the body and the world in ancient Egypt).

For example, the Egyptians believed that human generation (formation of the fetus and development of the infant) was the result of divine forces acting through paternal bone-seed, and maternal blood-milk. The same divine forces act for each particular animal (animal related to a god, see List of Egyptian deities by animal). This idea helps to understand the presence of semen, bone marrow, blood, or milk… of human or animal origin, in Egyptian recipes.

These recipes aim to capture divine forces for the benefit of the patient, such as the “blood of the horn of a black bull” (Eb. 454) used to treat scalp diseases. This blood, taken near the horn, is supposed to be of superior virtue, since it produces a black coat by nourishing the horn. Another recipe combines “boiled donkey hoof” and “bitch vulva blood” (Eb. 460), aiming to bring together the two forces of generation, bone-seed, and blood-flesh according to the invoked gods.

Excremental ingredients (sometimes called “coprotherapy”) are also considered to have autonomous vital force. They are intended to directly oppose demons or other harmful entities. It is then a repulsive action, to evacuate, chase away, or kill them as the case may be. This type of recipe “aims both to heal the patient and to protect the physician.”

Other products and means act by “mechanical” virtues: it is a matter of cooling what is too hot, softening or toning, emptying or filling, unblocking and circulating, etc.

Examples of Recipes

Examples from the Ebers Papyrus (translated by Thierry Bardinet):

• To cleanse the inside of the body: 1 cow’s milk, 1 incised fruit of the sycamore, 1 honey. It will be finely ground, cooked, and ingested for four consecutive days (Eb. 18).
• To expel the alterations found in a man’s body: castor seeds. It will be chewed and swallowed with beer until everything inside his body comes out. (Eb. 25).
• To drive away all the ailments found in one side of the inside of the body: 1 sweet clover, 1 date wine. It will be cooked in fat/oil. Dress with it (Eb. 40).
• To expel the burning substances found at the anus: 1 broad bean flour, 1 plant-djaret powder, 1 frankincense, 1 resin-ihemet, 1 galena. It will be shaped into a suppository and inserted into the anus (Eb. 155).
• The ointment with catfish skull against migraine (Eb. 250), here interpreted as the bandage on the head of a crocodile in clay with medicinal plants in its mouth.
  For migraine (literally: the pains that are on one side of the head): catfish skull, fried in fat/oil. Rub the head with it, for four consecutive days (Eb. 250).
• To drive away the seryt secretion that causes coughing: 1 realgar, 1 men resin, plant-ââam. It will be finely ground. (to be told to the patient) You must take seven stones and heat them in the fire. One stone will be coated with the medicine and placed in a new pot with the bottom pierced. You must insert a reed stem into the hole, and place your mouth to inhale the vapor. Do the same with each stone (Eb. 325).
• Another makeup, to open the view: 2 galena, 2 goose fat, 4 water. It will be placed in the eyes (Eb 401).
• For a burned spot on the first day: 1 peret-cheny fruit, 1 edible tuber rhizome, 1 cat’s dung. It will be mixed into a homogeneous mass with gum water and applied to it (Eb 498).
• To drive away the benout abscesses found in the teeth and make (re)grow the superficial flesh (=gum): 1 besbes plant, 1 incised fruit of the sycamore, 1 ineset plant, 1 honey, 1 terebinth resin, 1 water. It will be left at rest overnight in the dew and chewed (Eb 554).
• To extract a thorn when it is in the superficial flesh: donkey dung. It will be mixed with mucilage and placed on the orifice (entry point of the thorn) (Eb. 728).
• Remedy for an abnormal ear that concentrates pus: 1 moringa oil, 1 terebinth resin, 1 sekhepet liquid. It will be poured into the ear (Eb. 768).
• Home remedies, to prevent mosquitoes from biting (against stings): fresh moringa oil, smear with that (Eb. 846), to prevent mice from reaching something: cat fat, it will be placed on all things (Eb. 847).
• To make a woman cease to be pregnant for one year, two years, or three years: acacia part-qaa, plant-djaret, date. It will be finely ground with a vase-hénou of honey. Impregnate a plant tampon with it which will be placed in her vagina (Eb 783).
• For a painful breast: 1 calamine, 1 bull bile, 1 fly dung, 1 ochre. It will be prepared into a homogeneous mass. Rub the breast for four consecutive days (Eb. 810).

Some old translations or interpretations considered questionable:

• Dracunculiasis (Guinea worm): “wrap the emerging end of the worm around a stick and slowly extract it” (3,500 years later, this remains the standard treatment). This is a passage from recipe Eb. 876, whose translation by Bardinet is: “If you find that the affected area is red, round, like (after) a stick blow, (this) being caused by the ‘blow’ struck at all things that are in any part of the body, and for which seven knots are made (magical conjuration). You must say it is the sefet substance of a conduit-met, it is a ‘blow’ struck to a conduit-met that causes this.”
• A circumcision? : “Remedy for a foreskin (?) that is cut (circumcised) and from which blood comes out: drst, honey, cuttlefish bone, sycamore, dsjs fruit, it will be mixed and applied to it” (Eb. 732). Bardinet’s translation is “Remedy for an acacia thorn where when extracted, blood comes out: 1 plant-djaret, 1 honey, 1 nes-che, 1 sycamore, seeds of the djas plant. It will be prepared into a homogeneous mass and applied to it.”
• The recipe for continuous crying of the child (Eb. 782): “poppy capsules, wasp droppings found on walls. Mix into a mass, filter and take (by the patient) for four days. (The cries) cease immediately” (translation Lefebvre). Bardinet’s translation is: “parts-chepennou of the chepen plant, fly droppings on the wall. It will be prepared into a homogeneous mass, filtered, then absorbed for four consecutive days. (This) will stop perfectly.”

Modern translations are more cautious and do not attempt to guess precise identifications based on presumed contexts.

Birth of Pharmacognosy

The Ebers Papyrus would indicate the emergence of medical thought (observation, diagnosis, and prognosis) in a religious or magical context, but also the appearance of pharmacognosy which seeks to organize knowledge about therapeutic substances.

The structure of the recipes is a prototype of modern prescription comprising: the indication of an ailment, the naming of substances, their quantity or proportion, the type of preparation (grinding, filtering, cooking…), the vehicle or excipient (beer, water, honey, lees…), the dosage form (decoction, powder, pill, suppository, ovule…), the route of administration (oral, topical, rectal, vaginal, inhalation, fumigation…). Most recipes mention an evolutionary stage of the ailment, the time of prescription during the day, as well as the duration of treatment. Some mention the season or the age of the patient.

In 1876, after the publication of the Ebers Papyrus, Gaston Maspero formulated the following judgment: “With the little that the Egyptians knew, there may have been some merit in finding it nearly thirty centuries before our era.” Many mineral and plant substances mentioned in the papyrus retained medicinal use until the 20th century.

Several authors have sought a pharmacological interpretation supporting the presumed real effectiveness of certain ingredients. The most often cited is that of vitamin A contained in the fat and liver of animals. According to Gustave Lefebvre (with J.F. Porge), “Every bile contains cholic acid, and it is from this acid that our chemists synthetically prepare cortisone.”

Some authors believe that the infectious risk of excrements would be offset by a high immune resistance. Similarly, for the contraceptive recipe in the Ebers Papyrus, fermenting acacia gum produces lactic acid with proven spermicidal power, dates contain phytoestrogens, and honey has antiseptic properties.

The account of the Ten Plagues of Egypt, recorded in the Book of Exodus, represents one of the most dramatic confrontations in ancient religious history. Within the narrative of Exodus 7 through 12, these ten escalating calamities serve a dual purpose: to compel Pharaoh to release the enslaved Israelites from bondage and to demonstrate the supremacy of the God of Israel over the entire pantheon of Egyptian deities. As stated explicitly in Exodus 12:12, the judgments were directed not merely against the political state of Egypt, but against all the gods of Egypt, systematically dismantling the religious and economic pillars of the Nile Valley.

Blood in the Nile and the Invasion of Frogs

The first plague struck at the very lifeblood of Egyptian civilization. In Exodus 7:19, Aaron stretched out his staff over the waters of Egypt, turning the Nile River, its canals, and its reservoirs into blood. The fish died, the river smelled foul, and the Egyptians had to dig along the riverbanks for drinkable water. Theologically, this targeted Hapi, the deity of the annual Nile inundation, and Khnum, the guardian of the river’s source. By rendering the sacred river undrinkable and lethal to aquatic life, the plague turned Egypt’s primary source of agricultural prosperity into a symbol of death.

Seven days later, the second plague emerged directly from the compromised river. In Exodus 8:2 through 6, millions of frogs swarmed out of the Nile, filling royal palaces, bedrooms, kneading bowls, and bread ovens. In Egyptian religion, the frog was sacred to Heqet, the frog headed goddess of fertility, childbirth, and regeneration. Because frogs were revered and could not be killed by pious Egyptians, the population was forced to watch helplessly as the symbol of life overran their homes and rotted in heaps across the land after dying off.

Gnats, Flies, and the Distinction of Goshen

The third plague began without prior warning to Pharaoh. As recorded in Exodus 8:16, Aaron struck the dust of the earth, and all the dust throughout the land of Egypt became gnats or lice, afflicting both humans and animals. This strike humiliated Geb, the Egyptian god of the earth, whose very soil turned hostile. Even Pharaoh’s court magicians, who had attempted to replicate the first two signs through secret arts, admitted defeat in Exodus 8:19, declaring to Pharaoh that this was the finger of God.

With the fourth plague, a crucial geographical division appeared. In Exodus 8:22, God declared that the land of Goshen, where the Israelites resided, would be spared from the incoming swarms of biting flies so that Pharaoh would know the Lord was in the midst of the land. Dense clouds of insects, often associated with the sacred scarab beetle of the solar deity Khepri, ruined the Egyptian provinces while leaving Goshen untouched, proving that the calamities were targeted judgments rather than random natural disasters.

Pestilence of Livestock and Painful Boils

The fifth plague targeted the economic and religious wealth of the Egyptian pastures. In Exodus 9:3, a severe pestilence struck the horses, donkeys, camels, herds, and flocks belonging to the Egyptians, while not a single animal belonging to the Israelites perished. In a culture that worshiped the Apis bull as the living manifestation of Ptah and revered Hathor in the form of a cow, the sudden death of cattle represented both an agricultural collapse and a visible failure of the animal deities to protect their earthly forms.

Immediately following the livestock plague, Moses took handfuls of soot from a kiln and tossed it into the air before Pharaoh in Exodus 9:8. The fine ash spread across the land, causing festering boils to break out on people and animals alike. This sixth plague directly challenged Imhotep and Sekhmet, the Egyptian deities associated with medicine, healing, and protection from epidemic disease. The affliction was so severe that the court magicians could not even stand before Moses because of the sores covering their bodies.

Fiery Hail, Locusts, and Palpable Darkness

The seventh plague brought an unprecedented meteorological assault upon the sky. In Exodus 9:23, thunder, hail, and fire ran down to the ground, shattering trees, striking down livestock left in the fields, and ruining the ripening barley and flax crops. In the Egyptian worldview, Nut was the sky goddess who arched over the earth to protect it, while Shu ruled the atmosphere and Seth commanded storms. None of these celestial powers could halt the ice and fire that devastated the country’s food supply.

What little vegetation survived the hail—specifically the late blooming wheat and spelt—was entirely consumed by the eighth plague. Driven by a relentless east wind in Exodus 10:13, a swarm of locusts covered the face of the whole land until the ground was dark, stripping every green leaf and fruit from the trees. This annihilated the domain of Osiris and Renenutet, the deities of grain and the harvest, leaving Egypt facing imminent famine.

The ninth plague struck at the supreme pinnacle of the Egyptian state religion: the sun god Ra, of whom Pharaoh himself was considered the living son and earthly embodiment. In Exodus 10:21, Moses stretched his hand toward the sky, and a thick, palpable darkness descended over Egypt for three full days. People could not see one another or rise from their places, yet all the Israelites had light where they lived. For three days, the daily solar cycle that defined Egyptian cosmic order was extinguished.

The Death of the Firstborn and the Institution of Passover

After nine plagues failed to break Pharaoh’s hardened resolve, the tenth and final judgment struck the royal succession and every Egyptian household. As foretold in Exodus 11:5, at midnight every firstborn son in Egypt died, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on the throne to the firstborn of the captive in the dungeon, along with the firstborn of the cattle. Since Pharaoh’s firstborn son was considered a divine heir destined to maintain cosmic order, this final blow shattered the theology of divine kingship.

For the Israelites, survival during this final night centered on the institution of the Passover in Exodus 12:7, where families applied the blood of an unblemished lamb to the doorposts and lintels of their homes. When the Lord passed through the land to strike Egypt, He passed over the marked houses. By dawn, broken by grief, Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and urged the Israelites to depart immediately, ending four centuries of servitude and initiating the journey toward Mount Sinai.

Hippias of Elis (circa 470 BCE, Elis in the Peloponnese — after 399 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher-sophist and mathematician, a contemporary of Socrates. He was distinguished by the encyclopedic nature of his knowledge and the breadth of his interests. In addition to philosophical treatises, he wrote literary works in epic, lyrical, and tragic genres. He is the author of the world’s first history of philosophy. In his homeland, the philosopher was often entrusted with diplomatic missions.

Hippias
Ancient Greek: Ἱππίας
Date of birth	circa 470 B.C.E.
Place of birth	Alida
Date of death	after 399 B.C.E.
Country	Ancient Athens
Language(s) of the works	Ancient Greek
School/Tradition	sophistry
Main Interests	Philosophy, Geometry

Hippias’s philosophical ideas laid the foundation for the emergence and further development of egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism. Hippias is classified among the “older sophists,” whose names are associated with the emergence of the philosophical direction of sophistry. Hippias is also known for his achievements in mathematics. His name is linked to the description of the quadratrix and the solution to the angle trisection problem.

Hippias is a character in several Socratic dialogues by Plato and Xenophon. These dialogues depict philosophical disputes between Hippias and Socrates. Considering that the works were written by Socrates’s students, Hippias may be portrayed in a somewhat distorted manner.

Biography

Hippias was born in Elis, a region in northwest Peloponnese, around 470 BCE. In the 10th-century encyclopedia “Suda,” Hippias’s father is named Diopithes.

Biographical information about Hippias is scarce. He gained fame due to his extensive knowledge in many fields of study. In antiquity, he was nicknamed “the polymath” (Greek: Πολυΐστωρ, Polyistor). Even among other sophists who possessed encyclopedic knowledge, Hippias stood out for the breadth of his interests. In addition to philosophical treatises, he created literary works in various genres (epic, lyrical, and tragic). He is credited with compiling a list of Olympic victors, which was of great significance for dating various events in Greek history. Hippias authored the book “Collection” (Greek: Συναγωγή), which, according to one version, was the first history of philosophy. His approach to its creation was revolutionary. While Hippias’s predecessors may have referred to various philosophers only to criticize their assertions, he aimed to show that the teachings of predecessors and contemporaries depended on the “opinions of the ancients.” According to a more widespread version, the “Collection” was a compendium of information on natural philosophy and genealogy. In this book, Hippias attempted to find the origins of philosophy in mythology. For example, in the teaching of Thales of Miletus that “water is the principle of all things,” Hippias saw a connection with the myth of the primordial god Oceanus.

In Elis, Hippias was entrusted with diplomatic missions, most often to Sparta. Hippias also visited Athens, where he had the opportunity to debate with Socrates and other famous philosophers of the time.

Hippias possessed numerous practical skills. At Olympia, he demonstrated the ability to be self-sufficient, using only items he had handmade — shoes, a cloak, a chiton, a belt, a ring, and items necessary for ablutions.

As a teacher of wisdom, Hippias charged his students large sums of money. In addition to philosophy, he taught astronomy, music, geometry, phonetics, mnemonics, and meteorology. Hippias was distinguished by excellent oratory skills and an extraordinary memory. He became famous for his ability to deliver a speech on any topic without prior preparation.

The late antique author Tertullian claimed that Hippias was “killed because he was plotting against his city.” According to historian S. Dushanich, this event could have occurred around 385 BCE. Possibly, Tertullian identifies Hippias the philosopher with his namesake — the tyrant of Athens, who, after being exiled, began to serve the Persians and participated on their side in the Battle of Marathon. Historians usually date Hippias’s death as “after 399 BCE.” It is associated with Socrates’s mention of Hippias in his defense speech at the trial in 399 BCE.

Philosophical Teaching

Hippias is classified among the elder group of sophists, whose names are associated with the emergence of this direction in philosophy. He believed that in life, one should be guided primarily by the laws of nature, rather than human decrees. Nature unites people, while law separates them. If the law is opposed to nature, it will bring suffering. Hippias laid the foundation for the desacralization of human laws, subjecting their very existence to criticism. However, his conclusions were not destructive in nature. Based on natural law, there should be no division among citizens of different city-states, nor should they be discriminated against based on their origins. Moreover, in this concept, slavery is considered unnatural, as it arose not “from nature” but “from transient social relations.” Hippias’s ideas laid the groundwork for the emergence and further development of egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism.

Hippias is credited with authorship of one of the earliest contractual theories of the origin of the state and law. The philosopher’s line of reasoning can, with certain allowances, be reproduced as follows. There are “written” and “unwritten” laws. Unwritten laws are observed in all countries. They could not have been created by people, as they are physically incapable of gathering together and determining what can and cannot be done. Thus, unwritten laws are natural. Written laws are created by the citizens of each specific city-state and country. Accordingly, written laws differ. Hippias did not deny their necessity, but he noted that law does not always bring good. Moreover, a bad law, which does not ensure the “natural” rights inherent to all people, is harmful. The need for periodic changes in legislation indicates its imperfection. Thus, Hippias explained the existence of numerous independent state entities. Perhaps he also advocated for the existence of some kind of analogue of international law common to all states.

It is not impossible to exclude the authenticity of Hippias’s statement in “Protagoras” that intellectuals are kin and citizens “by nature,” although not so by law. It can be considered an attempt to find justification for the solidarity of the scholarly community against the backdrop of external conflicts between their native city-states.

The assertion that Hippias considered self-sufficiency or autarky as the goal of life is an anachronism. It is based on a fragment in which Hippias is depicted as a “jack of all trades,” capable of making everything necessary by himself. Information from ancient texts may only indicate that Hippias, based on his own example, considered autarky achievable.

Mathematical Achievements

Hippias is associated with the discovery of the quadratrix, which he used to solve the angle trisection problem. In scientific literature, there is an opinion that the quadratrix was described by a certain Hippias the mathematician, namesake of the philosopher. Hippias’s discoveries in the field of curves prompted the famous politician, philosopher, and mathematician Archytas of Tarentum to conduct research. Proclus Diadochus, in one of his comments on Euclid’s works, wrote: “Thus, Apollonius derived the main characteristic for each of the conic sections, Nicomedes for the conchoid, Hippias for the quadratrix, and Perseus for the spirals.” The transcendent curve of Hippias received the name quadratrix later, when Dinostratus was able to solve the problem of squaring the circle with its help. Therefore, it may also be called “Dinostratus’s quadratrix.”

Hippias’s merit in this case lies in the continuous correlation of two uniform motions — circular and rectilinear. Another ancient mathematician, Sporus, opposed such an approach: “Indeed, how can one make two points move from B in uniform motion so that one point comes to A along a straight line and the other point comes along the arc to D, if we do not know from the very beginning how the lengths of this straight line and arc relate to each other? After all, it is precisely in this respect that the speeds of both movements should be.” However, despite the fact that solving the problem using the quadratrix cannot be considered truly geometric, the quadratrix itself is used to solve various mathematical problems.

Hippias in Plato’s and Xenophon’s Socratic Dialogues

Plato. “Hippias Major.” 283 a You, Hippias, present a splendid and important proof of wisdom, both your own and that of people in general, — how much they differ from the ancients! According to you, the ignorance of people who lived before was great. It is said that the opposite happened to Anaxagoras compared to what happens to you: he inherited a large fortune, but due to recklessness, he lost everything — what an imprudent sage he was! Similar things were said about others who lived in ancient times. So, it seems to me, you present a splendid proof of the wisdom of present-day people compared to the past. Many agree that a wise person should first and foremost be wise for themselves. This is defined as follows: wise is the one who has earned more money. But enough about that. Tell me this: …

Hippias is portrayed as an active participant in three Socratic dialogues by Plato — “Protagoras,” “Hippias Major,” and “Hippias Minor,” and also mentioned in “Apology” and “Phaedrus.” The dialogue between Hippias and Socrates is the subject of Chapter IV of Book IV of Xenophon’s “Memorabilia of Socrates.” These works describe philosophical disputes between Hippias and Socrates. Plato and Xenophon were disciples of the latter. Hippias represented the opposite direction to the “Socratic” philosophy — sophistry. These sources are very important in describing the details of Hippias’s biography but may present the philosopher in a somewhat distorted light. Diogenes Laërtius (2nd–3rd century) also emphasized that “Even speaking in the voice of Socrates and Timaeus, Plato presents his own doctrines. And he refutes false opinions by introducing such characters as … Hippias … and others like them.”

Plato ridicules Hippias’s numerous knowledge, considering them superficial. At the same time, he portrays the philosopher as a foolish and boastful person with a lack of self-criticism. Hippias’s main motive is presented as a passion for gain. Greed is alien to Hippias. Money is not an end in itself for him but a measure of success. The opinions he expresses with great confidence turn out to be incorrect. In dialogues with Socrates, he suffers a complete defeat.

In “Hippias Major,” despite his knowledge, the character is portrayed as a foolish person. He cannot understand the difference between the particular and the general, between essence and appearance. When asked “What is beauty?” — Hippias answers: “A beautiful girl.” Socrates is interested in “beauty in itself, thanks to which everything else is adorned and appears beautiful — as soon as this idea attaches itself to something, it becomes a beautiful girl, mare, or lyre?” The dialogue formulates the idea that the definition of a concept is the definition of its essence, which should be understood as the unity in the diversity of its manifestations. Towards the end of the conversation, even Hippias, despite his foolishness, begins to guess what Socrates wants from him.

In the works of Plato and Xenophon, Hippias becomes the object of Socrates’s irony, which causes his indignation. So, to the question: “Your discovery is a great boon to humanity: … I, of course, will not leave you until I hear your account of the discovery of such a great blessing” — Hippias, to avoid getting into a comical situation, avoids answering: “you will not hear this, … enough of you mocking others — asking everyone questions and refuting them, while not wanting to give an account yourself and not wanting to express your opinion on anything.”