I-em-hotep rises before us as one of those intellectual giants who take
all knowledge for their province. In his comprehensiveness he surpasses
Leonardo da Vinci or our own Linacre; he is distinguished as a
physician, a minister of the king, a priest, a writer, an architect, an
alchemist, and an astronomer—great in all, but greatest in medicine; so
eminent that in the view of Egypt he is a god.
[Illustration: PLATE II
The Temple of Edfu
The earliest portions of which are believed to have been built by
I-em-hotep.]
[Illustration: PLATE III
The Step-pyramid of Sakkara
Supposed to have been built by I-em-hotep for the Pharaoh
Tosorthros.]
In the reign of Tosorthros, of the third dynasty, five or six thousand
years ago, we meet with the wise I-em-hotep in an inscription referring
to the seven years of famine which befell Egypt in consequence of a
succession of low Niles. He is there the adviser of Pharaoh; to him the
king applies in his trouble for counsel and help.[8] In the inscriptions
in the temple of Edfu[9] he is described at length as the great priest
I-em-hotep, the son of Ptah, who speaks or lectures.[10] Perhaps his
discourses or lectures were on medicine. Elsewhere he is described as
the writer of the divine books. It may here be remarked that probably
Ebers’ papyrus was one of the six divine books attributed to Thoth
ceremonially, but not improbably in large part the work of I-em-hotep.
Manetho, while speaking of his eminence as a physician, refers to him
also as an architect, the first to build with hewn stone.[11] Not
improbably he built the step pyramid of Sakkara, the tomb of his patron
Tosorthros.[12] Manetho also suggests that I-em-hotep improved and
completed the hieroglyphic script of Egypt. In the Hermetic literature
he is famed for his knowledge of astronomy or astrology; the Westcar
papyrus describes him further as an alchemist and magician.[13] These
powers were always associated with medicine, and even to-day in the
popular view they are not entirely dissociated from it. What share
I-em-hotep may have had in those early discoveries of the movement of
the blood, to which I am about to advert, we do not know. It does,
however, seem clear that either through the labours of I-em-hotep or of
other priest physicians, the Egyptians had discovered certain elementary
facts and knew as much as the Greeks, as much as we find in the
Hippocratic writings, or in those of Aristotle and the later Alexandrian
school, and the hypothesis seems a natural one that the knowledge
possessed by the Greeks was acquired from Egypt.