unlucky omens were equally prevalent. Such incantations consisted
usually of the recitation of certain phrases based originally, it
would appear, upon incidents in the history of the gods. The
words which the god had spoken in connection with some lucky
incident would, it was thought, prove effective now in bringing
good luck to the human supplicant--that is to say, the magician
hoped through repeating the words of the god to exercise the
magic power of the god. It was even possible, with the aid of the
magical observances, partly to balk fate itself. Thus the person
predestined through birth on an unlucky day to die of a serpent
bite might postpone the time of this fateful visitation to
extreme old age. The like uncertainty attached to those spells
which one person was supposed to be able to exercise over
another. It was held, for example, that if something belonging to
an individual, such as a lock of hair or a paring of the nails,
could be secured and incorporated in a waxen figure, this figure
would be intimately associated with the personality of that
individual. An enemy might thus secure occult power over one; any
indignity practised upon the waxen figure would result in like
injury to its human prototype. If the figure were bruised or
beaten, some accident would overtake its double; if the image
were placed over a fire, the human being would fall into a fever,
and so on. But, of course, such mysterious evils as these would
be met and combated by equally mysterious processes; and so it
was that the entire art of medicine was closely linked with
magical practices. It was not, indeed, held, according to
Maspero, that the magical spells of enemies were the sole sources
of human ailments, but one could never be sure to what extent
such spells entered into the affliction; and so closely were the
human activities associated in the mind of the Egyptian with one
form or another of occult influences that purely physical
conditions were at a discount. In the later times, at any rate,
the physician was usually a priest, and there was a close
association between the material and spiritual phases of
therapeutics. Erman[4] tells us that the following formula had to
be recited at the preparation of all medicaments: "That Isis
might make free, make free. That Isis might make Horus free from
all evil that his brother Set had done to him when he slew his
father, Osiris. O Isis, great enchantress, free me, release me
from all evil red things, from the fever of the god, and the
fever of the goddess, from death and death from pain, and the
pain which comes over me; as thou hast freed, as thou hast
released thy son Horus, whilst I enter into the fire and come
forth from the water," etc. Again, when the invalid took the
medicine, an incantation had to be said which began thus: "Come
remedy, come drive it out of my heart, out of these limbs strong
in magic power with the remedy." He adds: "There may have been a
few rationalists amongst the Egyptian doctors, for the number of
magic formulae varies much in the different books. The book that
we have specially taken for a foundation for this account of
Egyptian medicine-- the great papyrus of the eighteenth dynasty
edited by Ebers[5]--contains, for instance, far fewer exorcisms
than some later writings with similar contents, probably because
the doctor who compiled this book of recipes from older sources
had very little liking for magic."

It must be understood, however--indeed, what has just been said
implies as much--that the physician by no means relied upon
incantations alone; on the contrary, he equipped himself with an
astonishing variety of medicaments. He had a particular fondness
for what the modern physician speaks of as a "shot-gun"
prescription--one containing a great variety of ingredients. Not
only did herbs of many kinds enter into this, but such substances
as lizard's blood, the teeth of swine, putrid meat, the moisture
from pigs' ears, boiled horn, and numerous other even more
repellent ingredients. Whoever is familiar with the formulae
employed by European physicians even so recently as the
eighteenth century will note a striking similarity here. Erman
points out that the modern Egyptian even of this day holds
closely to many of the practices of his remote ancestor. In
particular, the efficacy of the beetle as a medicinal agent has
stood the test of ages of practice. "Against all kinds of
witchcraft," says an ancient formula, "a great scarabaeus beetle;
cut off his head and wings, boil him; put him in oil and lay him
out; then cook his head and wings, put them in snake fat, boil,
and let the patient drink the mixture." The modern Egyptian, says
Erman, uses almost precisely the same recipe, except that the
snake fat is replaced by modern oil.

In evidence of the importance which was attached to practical
medicine in the Egypt of an early day, the names of several
physicians have come down to us from an age which has preserved
very few names indeed, save those of kings. In reference to this
Erman says[6]: "We still know the names of some of the early body
physicians of this time; Sechmetna'eonch, 'chief physician of the
Pharaoh,' and Nesmenan his chief, the 'superintendent of the
physicians of the Pharaoh.' The priests also of the
lioness-headed goddess Sechmet seem to have been famed for their
medical wisdom, whilst the son of this goddess, the demi-god
Imhotep, was in later times considered to be the creator of
medical knowledge. These ancient doctors of the New Empire do not
seem to have improved upon the older conceptions about the
construction of the human body."

As to the actual scientific attainments of the Egyptian
physician, it is difficult to speak with precision. Despite the
cumbersome formulae and the grotesque incantations, we need not
doubt that a certain practical value attended his therapeutics.
He practised almost pure empiricism, however, and certainly it
must have been almost impossible to determine which ones, if any,


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