Anonymous Author of Ebers Papyrus
The Ebers Papyrus is an Egyptian hieratic scroll that was written c. 1550 BCE. The papyrus came to light in 1872 when Georg Ebers, a German Egyptologist excavating in the vicinity of Thebes, was approached by a wealthy Egyptian offering the document for sale.
It was duly acquired and spirited away to the University of Leipzig, where it still resides. The scroll is a medical text that is mainly devoted to the medicinal treatment of disease, but with some detail given to cosmetics! There is a total of 811 prescriptions written down, some simple, some complex. If that sounds like a lot, the scroll measured 68ft in length by 1ft in width (unfortunately it was cut up into pages at Leipzig to make it easier to study). Many of the prescriptions are, with today’s perspective, bizarre. Simple remedies of this category include ‘old book cooked in oil’, ‘the film of dampness which is found on the wood of ships’, ‘rotted cereals’, blood, bile, excrement and urine! Consequently, some of the compounds are interesting (e.g. a worm-cake to treat tapeworm comprising herbs-of-the-field and natron, baked into a cake with cow’s bile).1 Incantations were often part of various treatments.There are 119 plant remedies, of which around thirty could be deemed herbs or spices, plus many mineral and animal remedies. The more recognisable spices and herbs include acanthus, aloes, balsam, caraway seed, coriander, fennel, juniper berries, peppermint, poppy seeds and saffron.
Many of the remedies described in the papyrus had probably been used for hundreds of years already; despite their strangeness, we can see the start of a pharmacopoeia, which would become much more logical, scientific and effective over the course of the succeeding millennium.