THE DEVELOPMENT OF

         PAPER      

    After the development of cuneiform writing and the use of clay tablets (dubs) by the Sumerians, approximately 5,500 years B.P., the history of publishing and book manufacture moves to North Africa, to:

THE WORLD OF

ANCIENT EGYPT

    Although eventually developing an alphabet based on the Proto-Sinaic and Phoenician, the Egyptian establishment preferred pictograms, which are called hieroglyphs, for the ceremonial and formal motives which dominated their civilization, to decorate their temples and tombs.

    However, conservative their ethos was, they are certainly credited with the invention of the medium of paper, which is essentially still used today. The Egyptian papermakers used reeds as the raw material and glued the finished sheets of paper together to make long rolls of paper on which they wrote their books, which are called scrolls. Let’s first look at hieroglyphs and the Egyptian culture which engendered this great technological achievement:

The Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system consists of several hundred picture signs. The signs can be divided into two classes, phonograms and ideograms.

Phonograms, or signs used to write the sounds of the Egyptian language. The particular sound value of a sign was usually obtained from the Egyptian name for the object represented. Since the Egyptians did not normally write the vowels, only the consonantal "skeleton" of the word is given. although each consonant can be written with a single sign (the alphabet signs), most sound-signs express a series of two or more consonants. Some of the Egyptian consonants hve no equivalents in most modern scripts, and Egyptologists use conventionalized signs to represent these when transcribing Egyptian. [For example: F y cn rd ths y drstnd]

Ideograms, or idea-signs, in which each picture stands for the object represented, or for some idea closely connected with the object.

A particular word could be written using only sound-signs, or only an idea-sign, but most words were written using a combination of both. It was a particularly common practice to use one or more idea-signs at the end of a word to give the general meaning of the word. A sign used in this way is called a determinative.

Egyptians were very much aware of the decorative value of hieroglyphic writing, and elaborately carved and painted hieroglyphs were often an important part of the decorative scheme of an Egyptian temple or tomb. At the top of this page you can see the name of King Ramsses 111 (1198-1166 B.C.), enclosed in the cartouches or oval frames which the Egyptians employed to mark off royal names, and flanked by the hawks of the sky-god, form part of a decorative frieze from the king's temple at Medinet Habu…

The Above Extracted
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Why was the Nile so important to the people of Egypt ?

    Egypt is most certainly the land of the River.  The Nile was the most vital aspect of the ancient Egyptian culture.  It provided water to drink, plants to harvest and an irrigation system to water crops.  It also succeeded in providing the most fertile soil the ancient world had ever encountered.

 
    The river was considered the life giver of the entire Egyptian society.  There are several deities derived from the animals and plants that grew along it's banks.  The world's first form of paper came from the papyrus plant that flourished along the Nile.

 
    Perhaps one of the most interesting facts about the Nile is its position and length.  The Nile is the longest river in the world, and when looking at it on a map appears to flows upward.  This makes Upper Egypt (Thebes, Valley of the Kings) appear to be Lower Egypt and Lower Egypt (Alexandria, Cairo) appear to be Upper Egypt.  This all seems kind of confusing!  But once you are familiar with this very important aspect, understanding the regions is easy!

   "Egypt was nurtured and defined by the Nile, which originated in the highlands of central Africa, rushed over rocky cataracts in Nubia, rolled through the fertile valley of Upper Egypt, and fanned out to form the lush delta of Lower Egypt.

    [There are differences of opinion as to from where the majority of the people known eventually as Egyptians derive. Although most Egyptologists see a Semitic heritage, which is apparent by their language, many others believe in a West African or “Bantu” heritage. Perhaps both origins are correct. Ed.]

    The ancient distinction between Upper and Lower Egypt was symbolized by the white and red crowns of the pharaoh, who also wore the double crown is his capacity as Lord of the Two Lands.  Rulers of the Old Kingdom made their capital at Memphis, where

Upper and Lower Egypt met.

    During the New Kingdom, Thebes became a great ceremonial center, site of royal residences, temples, and tombs.  The Egyptian empire reached its height at this time, extending far south of the First Cataract--the traditional boundary with Nubia--and reaching up

through western Asia as far as Syria.”

    As you can see the geographical setting of Egypt reassured the Egyptian's stability to govern, its ability to farm the rich and fertile land, and to derive a religion that withstood centuries of fellowship.

  Historical Periods in Ancient Egypt

    Various systems of periodization are used in scholarly writing on Egypt, but in the main, they adopt the same general characterization of Egypt's history as comprising four major periods of centralization under native rule:

      Old Kingdom,

      Middle Kingdom,

      New Kingdom and

      Late Period (or Late Kingdom).

Between these periods of relative centralization of political power lie three so-called "Intermediate Periods." At the beginning of Egyptian history, scholars recognize an "Early Dynastic Period." At the end of native rule, they speak of a "Ptolemaic Period" (after the dynasty of Greek rulers during most of the period, the Ptolemies) and a Roman Period.

There are various approaches to dating when the precise dates are not known. The system used here, adopted from Baines and Málek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt, uses somewhat later dates than some of the others. It is sometimes called a "low dating system." Dates after 664 are precise. (All dates in the chart below are BCE unless otherwise noted.)  

Hieroglyphics and Writing

Who invented the first form of paper?

    Being able to read and write was essential for a career in the Egyptian civil service. Not much is known about Egyptian schools. Some temples ran schools but many boys seem to have studied with local scribes (trained writers).

    Reading, writing and mathematics were the basic subjects. Pupils learned by copying out texts in the two main scripts, hieroglyphic and hieratic. They wrote with pens made from reeds on wooden tablets, pieces of pottery, or scraps of papyrus. Surviving school texts show pupils' spelling mistakes and teachers' corrections. Discipline was strict:

"A boy's ear is on his back, he listens when he is beaten."

Scribes

    Scribes were employed to write official or private letters and to draw up legal documents. Other common tasks were recording the progress of all kinds of work and making lists of goods. Educated people read for pleasure so scribes wrote or copied out literature such as proverbs, stories and love poems.

Papyrus

    The Egyptians invented writing paper. This paper was made from the pith of  papyrus, a common marsh plant. The tall stems were cut down and carried off in bundles.

    Each stem was stripped of it's rind and cut into short pieces. These pieces were then cut lengthwise into narrow strips. It was essential to keep the papyrus pith moist.

    Two layers of strips at right angles were put on a hard surface and beaten until they fused. The papyrus sheets were polished and then glued together to make scrolls.

Papyrus was the most important writing material in the ancient world. Our word "paper" derives from the word "papyrus," an Egyptian word that originally meant "that which belongs to the house" (the bureaucracy of ancient Egypt). Papyrus is a triangular reed that used to grow along the banks of the Nile, and at an early stage of their history the Egyptians developed a kind of writing material made out of the pith within the stem of the papyrus plant. At the same time they developed a script that ultimately provided the model for the two most common alphabets in the world, the Roman and the Arabic.

Although Egypt exported its writing material to other parts of the ancient world, few papyri from outside Egypt survive. Only the climate of Egypt and certain parts of Mesopotamia favors the preservation of papyri in the debris of ancient towns and cemeteries. A large number of Duke papyri were recovered from mummy cartonnage found in a cemetery near the ancient town of Heracleopolis, south of modern Cairo. Everybody knows the Egyptians mummified their dead. First they prepared the corpses and wrapped them in linen. Then they covered them with pieces of cartonnage covered with plaster and painted in bright colors. This cartonnage consists of several layers of papyrus. The papyri used for making cartonnage often came from recycling bins in administrative offices.

Hieroglyphics

   

The hieroglyphic script was mainly for royal or religious texts carved in stone. Simplified (cursive) hieroglyphs were used for writing religious texts on papyrus. Letters, records, textbooks and literature were written in hieratic, a kind of shorthand hieroglyphic. In the 7th century BC an even more abbreviated script called demotic was introduced.

    The hieroglyphic script has about 750 signs. Most are pictures of people, animals, plants or objects. To emphasize and protect royal or holy names, the Egyptians wrote then in a frame called a cartouche.  Here is an example of a cartouche: 

    There are two main types of sign: sound-signs and sense-signs. Sound-signs can represent from one to four consonants. The vowels were not written out. A sense-sign can be used to write a word or placed after a word to show the area of meaning. For example, verbs of motion have a pair of legs attached.

Writing in Egypt

under Greek and Roman Rule

by Peter van Minnen

    When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BC he could not know that the Greek language he introduced into this ancient civilization was to dominate it for more than a thousand years. Until well after the Arab invasion of Egypt in AD 640-642 Greek was used for official documents rather than the indigenous language, Egyptian, which was used for religious texts and private documents written in Hieratic or Demotic script and, from the third century AD onwards, with the aid of the Greek alphabet. The last-mentioned combination of an indigenous language and a foreign script is called Coptic …

    The Ptolemaic period lasted from 323 to 30 BC. It is called "Ptolemaic" after the names of the kings of Egypt at the time: Ptolemy I to XIV, usually married to either an Arsinoe, a Berenice or a Cleopatra. The Ptolemies were of Greek-Macedonian descent, just like Alexander the Great. The Roman period, sometimes divided into a Roman and a Byzantine section, lasted from 30 BC to AD 640-642.

   During this millenium millions of Greek and Coptic and thousands of Hieratic, Demotic and Latin (to the right) documents were written for public and private use. A small number of these survive today. For example the published number of Greek papyri is only about 50,000. There are at least seven times as many still to be published. A limited number of texts are literary, including Homer , Aristophanes , an ancient novel ( Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius), etc. These are written in calligraphic scripts. Most texts are strictly documentary.

    Among the documentary papyri we find official documents, like edicts of kings, emperors and governors, administrative documents, like tax rolls, tax receipts, census returns and property returns , private documents, like sales , leases , loans, wills, marriage contracts and contracts of apprenticeship, as well as more personal documents, like letters , memoranda, accounts, horoscopes and amulets. Especially the latter class of documents have an intrinsic human interest because of their individual character

    All these texts somehow serve to reconstruct ancient civilization at large, its social, economic, political, legal, religious, linguistic and even medical history, from a far more authentic angle than is otherwise possible through the written word. Usually we have only the works of biased classical authors to tell us what their life was like. Even inscriptions on stone tend to be written with posterity in mind. Papyri, however, were not written for us but for the use of the ancients themselves. This gives them their unique freshness and directness. Their interest is even greater when they are part of one and the same private archive, because in that case we can follow the ups and downs of a family through several decades, generations or even centuries.

   There are about a hundred papyri in the Duke collection that originally belonged to the archive of Ammon, a lawyer from Panopolis in Upper Egypt. While he was on a business trip in Alexandria in AD 348 he wrote a letter to his mother, the longest private letter from the ancient world. The letter is written in impeccable Greek and very carefully executed, no doubt to impress his mother (he was about forty by then). He relates how his brother Horion and a Nubian prince left Alexandria to meet the emperor Constantius. The last column of the text contains greetings to his family and friends back home.

    The script the Greeks introduced in Egypt in the fourth century BC was already many centuries old. The earliest papyri in Greek found in Egypt are all written in rather square letters (like a fragment of Euripides , twice enlarged), not unlike the letters found inscribed on stone or the printed capital letters of modern Greek. From the earliest Ptolemaic period until the Arab conquest the Greek script as used for documentary texts underwent significant changes. It became much more cursive and by the first century AD some hands had become almost illegible. The difficulty we encounter in deciphering texts written in this way is enhanced by the fact that the Greeks did not use any word division.

    In the later Roman period the scribes developed a cursive Greek script that allowed even more continuous writing. This was initially used in documentary texts only (as in a list of villages ), but at the very end of antiquity this script was also introduced in the writing of literary texts. In this way a form of cursive Greek was developed that is still used in printing Greek today, and taught in modern Greek schools.

   An important aspect of all documentary papyri is the language in which they were written. The Greek used in Graeco-Roman Egypt was no longer the language used by the classical Greeks, for example Plato and the other companions of Socrates. It was already well on its way to medieval and modern Greek, notably as far as the pronunciation is concerned. The language was also adapted to the new environment, which was largely Egyptian. In this way a sort of colonial Greek came into existence, which was also found in other parts of the Mediterrean world where Greek was used in the context of an entirely different language, be it Italy, Syria or Palestine. The study of the language of the New Testament (starting with Matthew 1:1 in Coptic to the left) can profit considerably from the language of the Greek texts found in Egypt.

   Papyrus (derived from an Egyptian expression meaning "from the great house", i.e. the pharaonic administration of yore; our word "paper" is derived from it) was the most important writing material in the ancient world once its superiority to clay tablets was recognized. Because papyrus mainly grows in Egypt, the other civilizations had to import it from there and this also goes for the Graeco-Roman world. Apart from papyrus other materials like parchment (e.g. a fragment of Plato ), potsherds (the so-called ostraca like the receipt to the right, twice enlarged) and wood had their use too. Ostraca were available free and the smooth surface permits of writing in ink. Wood was rather scarce in Egypt and had to be imported. Wood was mainly used in schools (e.g. a school tablet ), but also for other purposes. We find all kinds of writing on other objects from Graeco-Roman Egypt as well.

PAPYRUS

IN OTHER PARTS OF THE MIDDLE EAST

By Meir Bar-Ilan

Places and Dates

    Papyrus, the writing surface named after the plant from which it is made, was manufactured as early as the first Egyptian dynasty, circa 3100 BCE. The emergence of writing and the concomitant use of papyrus seem to be an necessary outcome of the imperial bureaucracy. Papyrus was invariably used by the Egyptians until the 9th-11th centuries CE, that is, for 4000 years.

    It was no later than the 20th century BCE when Papyrus was first exported to Syria. Later on it found its way to other peoples that developed writing, such as the Greeks. The majority of the extant papyri have been discovered in Egypt, where they survived thanks to the dry climate. Papyri have also been found in Asia and Europe. Only few fragments of papyri from the classic period have been found in Greece, though dozens of drawings of rolls and papyri appear on vases of the same period. These drawings supplement the textual sources with many details of classical and hellenistic Greek book-culture.

    That biblical literature was originally written on papyrus (rather than on parchment) is evident from archaeological finds and textual analysis. In wadi Murbaat (near the Dead Sea) a papyrus has been found from the 7th century BCE, and another one, dating from the 4th century BCE, has been found above Jericho. The imprints of papyri fibers have been found on the underside of some bullae (such as the one bearing the inscription, "li- Gedalyahu asher al ha-bayit"). These findings support the scholarly claim that the "books" mentioned in the Bible (Jer 36; 15,16; Ezek 2,8-3,3) were actually written on papyrus.

    Over 800 scrolls have been found in Qumran, of which more than 60 (8%) are papyrus scrolls. The Jewish sages disqualified Biblical scrolls written on papyri as unfit for the ritual (see Mishnah, Meg 2:2), a prohibition which was not observed by the Egyptian Jews.

    In the Byzantine period, papyrus was manufactured in Palestine. According to the Jewish mystical literature of the era, as well as the "Testament of Abraham" (probably composed in Egypt), in the heavenly administration human deed are written on pinax and on papyrus, from which one can infer that the same applies to the more earthly administration.

Technology

    Basically, the papyrus-manufacturing process, as accurately described by Pliny, has not changed in thousands of years. The Papyrus product was made by tearing off the 'skin' of the papyrus reed. The strips thus formed were first beaten and dried in the sun and then were laid lengthwise and crosswise to attain strength, perhaps with the aid of some glue (made of plants). Finally, the papyrus was stretched and smoothed to be fit for use. There seem to be slight differences in the manufacture of papyrus, depending on when and where in Egypt it was made.

    For practical purposes, the papyrus was limited to a standard size running 47 cm in length at the most (29-33 cm on the average), and 22 cm in width. The total length of the papyrus scroll, consisting of 20 'pages', amounted to some 4.5 meters.

    The dependence on a single raw material, a plant that grew mainly in Egypt, determined the borders of its manufacture and had a significant effect on its cost when exported from its place of origin.

    The Egyptian embargo on exporting papyrus at the end of the 7th century CE led the way to parchment, and later on to 'modern' paper, the successor to the papyrus. 'Ground' paper (the predecessor of modern paper) was invented in China in the second century CE, but reached western Asia only after the Muslim conquest of Turkistan in 751. After the secrets of manufacturing the 'ground' paper (from a selection of plants) were disclosed, paper gradually replaced papyrus for economic reasons. In Egypt, the manufacturing of papyrus continued till the end of the 11th century. Nowadays it is manufactured on a small scale, merely as a tourist attraction.

Scribal Technique

    The main instrument of the scribe was the pen, kalamos, a reed that was cut to some 15 cm and whose end was chewed to form a brush-like edge. The scribe had several pens for various purposes, depending on the width of the script and its color. The ancient Egyptian scribe used several colors (with organic and mineral bases), because writing hieroglyphs was closely connected to drawing. In the course of time, the number of the scribe's colors was reduced to two: black and red. The ink-well included a few pens, two dry inks, and a small container of water to prepare the ink for use.

    The ancient scribe usually wrote (on one side of the papyrus only) while standing, or in a kneeling posture, without the aid of a desk (as does his modern Jewish-Yemenite counterpart). In the second millenium BCE, some Egyptian scribes began to use desks. In western culture, the desk became an essential accessory only in the beginning of the Middle-Ages.

    Usually a scribe worked together with other scribes, who were either his equals, official scribes like himself, or of different ranks and subordinate to the chief scribe. Such group writing served several purposes: to write in two (and more) languages, to write from dictation, writing by a whole family of scribes (or 'guild'), or for apprenticeship reasons.

    The discovery of papyri gave birth to the science of papyrology, which has immensely contributed to our knowledge of the ancient world.

Bibliography

• Beck, F. A. G., Album of Greek Education , Sydney 1975.

• Cerny, J., Paper and Books in Ancient Egypt , London 1952 (rep. Chicago 1977).

• Grohmann, A., From the World of Arabic Papyri , Cairo 1952.

• Haran, M., 'Book-Scrolls in Israel in Pre-Exilic Times', JJS , 33 (1982), pp. 161-173.

• Hunter, D., Papermaking Through Eighteen Centuries , New York 1930 (rep. New York 1971).

• Lewis, N., Papyrus in Classical Antiquity , Oxford 1974.

• Metzger, B. M., Historical and Literary Studies , Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968, pp. 123-137.

• Sirat, Collet, Les Papyrus en Caracteres Hebraiques Trouveres en Egypte , Paris 1985.

• Skeat, T. C., 'The Length of The Standard Papyrus Roll and the Cost- Advantage of the Codex', Zeitschrift fuer Papyrologie und Epigraphie , 45 (1982), pp. 169-175.

(From: Life by the Nile)

The Rosetta Stone

     The Rosetta Stone is what some scholars call the key that unlocked the mystery of hieroglyphics.  It dates to 196 BC. It is inscribed with royal decree written in two different scripts, hieroglyphic and demonic and Greek. This helped the French scholar J.F.Champollion to decipher the hieroglyphic script.

What was life like in Egypt 3,000 years ago?

    The father headed the family in Ancient Egypt. Upon his death, his oldest son became the head of the family.

    But women, unlike most ancient civilizations, had almost as many rights as men. They could own and inherit property, buy and sell goods, and make a will. A wife could also obtain a divorce unlike any other ancient society.

    Kings commonly had several wives at the same time.  In many cases, a kings' chief wife was a member of the royal family, such as his sister or half sister.

   Children played with dolls, tops, and stuffed leather balls. They had board games with moves determined by the throw of dice. They also had several kinds of pets, including cats, dogs, monkeys, baboons, and birds.

    Bread, beer, vegetables and a little fresh or dried fish was the diet of the poor. Better off Egyptians enjoyed dates, pomegranates and figs. They ate meat, especially beef and goose, and drank date or grape wine.

    Decayed teeth of some mummies suggest an over-indulgence in cakes sweetened with honey and fruit.  The Egyptians generally dressed in white linen garments. Women wore robes or tight dresses with shoulder straps. Men wore skirts or robes.

   Rich Egyptians wore wigs, partly for protection against the sun. Wealthy Egyptians also wore leather sandals. The common people usually went barefoot. Young children rarely wore any clothes

The ancient Egyptians liked to use cosmetics and wear jewelry. Women wore red lip powder, dyed their hair, and painted their fingernails. They outlined their eyes and colored their eyebrows with gray, black and green paint. Men also outlined their eyes and often wore as much makeup as women. Both sexes used perfume and wore necklaces, rings, and bracelets. Combs, mirrors, and razors were common grooming aids. Adult hairstyles could be very elaborate, and important people owned wigs on a

range of lengths and styles.
   

    Houses were made from mud brick. The homes of ordinary people were small and built close together. Livestock such as goats and geese might be kept in the middle of towns. Cats, dogs and monkeys were popular pets. Cooking was done in domed clay ovens in kitchen yards. The flat roofs were used as storage and workspace.

   Many rich Egyptians had houses with as many as 70 rooms. Some of these homes were country estates with orchards, pools, and large gardens. Egyptian houses had small windows placed high in the walls to help keep out the sun. The people spread wet mats on the floors to help cool the air inside their houses. On hot nights, they often slept on the roof, where it was cooler.

The Ancient Egyptian Religion

What was the basis for all life for the Egyptians?

    The Egyptians told many stories about the creation of the world. Most of them start by imagining a time when there was nothing but the Waters of Chaos. In some stories the first thing to emerge from the water is a blue lotus whose petals hide the infant sun god. Others start with the Primeval Mound, the first dry land, rising above the waters. To the mound comes a phoenix or hawk or goose called the Great Cackler who lays the world egg.

 
    Egyptian gods and goddesses (deities) were all forms of the Creator but they took on identities of their own. Some had special areas of interest: Thoth was a god of wisdom and writing, and Hathor a goddess of love and death.

Sacred Creatures

The deities were often shown in human form wearing distinctive headdresses and carrying sacred symbols. Some deities had several forms. The god Sobek could appear as a crocodile or, as a man with the head of a crocodile.

 
    The goddess Hathor might be shown as a beautiful woman, as the head of a woman with cow's ears, or as a cow or cow-headed woman.

The sun god had numerous forms, some of them worshipped as separate gods. The rising sun was Khepri, shown as a scarab-beetle , the noonday sun was Horus, the hawk god, and the setting sun was Atum, shown as a ram-headed man.

    Late in Egyptian history the cult of sacred animals became very important. Creatures such as the ibises sacred to Thoth or the crocodiles sacred to Sobek lived in temples and were given elaborate burials when they died.

Egyptian Temples:

Palaces of the Gods

    A temple was the palace of the deity who lived in the cult statue. The statue was hidden inside a shrine or sanctuary, the holiest part of the temple. Every morning the chief priest entered the sanctuary and opened the shrine. Many rituals were performed, including clothing and perfuming the statue and presenting a meal. In return for these offerings the gods were asked to keep Egypt safe and prosperous.

Ordinary people could not watch the daily ritual but they did join in festivals. At these festivals, divine statues were carried outside the temple so the gods might "speak" to the people. Some temples were centers of learning, artists and craftsmen made a wide range of goods in temple workshops.

    The major temples were state-controlled so the goods were distributed by the government. Kings gave estates, ships and slaves to support temples. In the 12th century BC the temple of Amon at Karnak had over 100,000 people working for it.

Medecine Papyri of Egypt:

The Egyptians were one of the first people to have paracticing physicians.

    The oldest known physician is Imhotep. He lived around 2725 b.c. He was also known as a high officer, a pyramid builder, and an astrologer.

    A popular belief is that the Ancient Egyptians new very little about anatomy. This proves to be false, because in the Ebers papyrus the ancient egyptians say that a depressed skull fracture looked like a puncture in a pottery jar.

    Docters in Ancient Egypt usually went through years of hard training at temple schools. Usually in the arts of interrogation, inspection, and palpation.

    Egyptian doctors new lots about the human body for their time. They studied the structure of the brain, and knew that the pulse was related to the heart. They could also cure many illnesses and set broken bones.

    Like the doctors of today, Ancient Egyptian docotors gave out prescriptions. The prescriptions that they gave out were usually for medicines. The one to the left is written in greek, and has something to do with lead monoxide.

Some plants used in Egyptian medicine:

Castor Oil

    Castor oil, along with figs and dates, were used as laxatives by the Egyptians.

Tannic Acid

    Tannic acid was valued by the Egyptians, because it helped heal burns. It was usually derived from acacia nuts. An acacia tree is pictured to the left.

Coriander

    Coriander was considered to have cooling, stimulant, carminative and digestive properties. It was also taken as a tea for stomach illness.

 Ancient Egyptian Surgical Tools:

Ordered from left to right:

1. knives

2. drill

3. saw

4. forceps or pincers

5. censer

6. hooks

7. bags tied with string

8. beaked vessel

9. vase with burning incense

10. Horus eyes

11. scales

12. pot with flowers of Upper and Lower Egypt

13. pot on pedestal

14. graduated cubit or papyrus

15. scroll without side knot (or a case holding reed scalpels)

16. shears

17. spoons

The Edwin Smith Papyrus:

    One of the main sources of Egyptian Medical practices is the Edwin Smith papyrus. It was written around 1700 b.c. but most of the information is based on texts written around 2640 b.c., Imhoteps time. The papyrus appears to talk mainly about wounds, and how to treat them, and suprisingly little about diseases.

    Here is an excerpt from it. It has to do with curing "Stupid Vision"--

" Take the water (humor) contained in pigs eyes, take true antimony, red lead, natural honey, of each 1 Ro (about 15 cc); pulverize it finely and combine it into one mass which should be injected into the ear of the patient and he will be cured immediately. Do and thou shalt see. Really excellent! Thou shalt recite as a spell: I have brought this which was applied to the seat of yonder and replaces the horrible suffering. Twice. "

Eber's Papyrus:

    The Ebert papyrus is much more complete than the Edwin Smith papyrus. It is made up of 110 pages, including approximately 877 remedies. The papyrus is not based upon healing any one part of the body. It has sections that cover everything from the head to the toes to the fingers to the eyes. It also include remedies to parasitic stomach disieases and a small section on the heart.

Now, Back to

The Great Egyptian “Book of the Dead”

  Death and Burial Customs

Where did the Egyptians believe that they went when they died?

    The ancient Egyptians took many precautions to make sure that the spirits of the dead could enjoy life after death. Those who could afford them had elaborate family tombs.

       People visited these tombs to make regular food offerings to their dead relations. In case the family neglected this duty, stone stele were placed in the outer area of the tombs. These often show the dead person sitting next to a table of food offerings. They are inscribed with a magical formula. The idea was that when this was spoken aloud the dead got everything they needed to live on.

The Book of the Dead

    One spell collection known as The Book of the Dead stresses that all spirits were judged before Osiris. The dead person's heart was weighed against a feather representing maat-- truth. If their heart was heavier than truth because they had lead a wicked life they would be eaten by a monster and die a second death. Those who passed the judgment became blessed spirits who lived with gods. Such spirits were still believed to want intact bodies to return to.

    Before the dead could reach the paradise known as the Field of Reeds, they had to pass through an underworld full of monsters and demons.

In the Middle Kingdom some coffins were painted with maps of the underworld and with spells against it's dangers. In the New Kingdom the spells were written on papyrus scrolls and placed in the tomb.

    In early times burial in hot dry sand preserved bodies naturally. When coffinscame into use some artificial way of stopping decay was needed. At some periods the process of mummification was used to preserve bodies.

Mummification

   The exact treatment depended on what the family could afford. The most elaborate method took about 70 days. First the embalmers took out the brain through the nose. The vital organs were removed and treated separately, though the heart might be left in the chest. The inside of the body was cleaned and packed with scented resins. Natron, a natural drying agent, was put inside and all around the body.

    After about 40 days the body would have been completely dried out. The next stage was to put a packing material under the skin to imitate flesh and to refill the main cavity with scented materials. Finally the mummy was treated with perfumed oils and molten resin before being wrapped for burial.

The Above Articles Unless Noted, Are Adapted and Extracted From:

and

Egyptian Hieroglyphs

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