Monday, September 05, 2005

The Ancients


Imhotep was the royal advisor to King Zoser during the Third Dynasty of Kemet.

Regarded as the world's first recorded multi-genius, Imhotep was an architect, astronomer, philosopher, poet and physician. As an architect he was responsible for designing the Step Pyramid and the Saqqara Complex. During his lifetime he was given a host of titles, among them: Chancellor of the King of Lower Kemet, the First after the King of Upper Kemet, High Priest of Heliopolis and Administrator of the Great Palace. As a physcian, Imhotep is believed to have been the author of the Edwin Smith Papyrus in which more than 90 anatomical terms and 48 injuries are described. This is well over 2,200 years before the Western Father of Medicine Hippocrates is born. Some 2,000 years after his death, Imhotep was deified by the inhabitants of Kemet and was known later as Asclepius, God of Medicine, to the Greeks.

As a philosopher and poet, Imhotep's most remembered phrase is: "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we shall die."

Or something like that.

Information courtesy, http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Classroom/9912/egypthistory.html


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i wonder if back then you really had as much clout when you had those names. Being a physician just meant that you were certigfied to cut people's limbs off (after waving a stick at them in a shaman-type fashion). I think they just gave those titles out willie-nillie. Imhotep-shmeemhotep. I bet we've got more brains in our left pinkie-toes than he had. HA!

Cory Godbey said...

you should only say that after you've got a couple pyramids under your belt. har!

Anonymous said...

Come to think of it, I do recall such mentions of brain surgeries in Egypt's history from which the patients survived also.