THE EDWIN SMITH PAPYRUS.

SOME PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS,

BY

JAMES HENRY BREASTED.

For the benefit of the members and friends of the New York Historical Society the writer recently published a preliminary notice of this remarkable papyrus. This account() was necessarily of a purely popular nature and contained statements for which it was impossible to adduce the supporting evidence. As it will be some time before the writer is able to publish the papyrus in extenso, it has seemed desirable to present some of this evidence here, together with a fuller introduction to the document than was possible in the popular essay just mentioned.

Mr. Edwin Smith, after whom the papyrus is named, went to Egypt about the year 1858. He was at that time thirty-six years of age and had studied Egyptian in both London and Paris before proceding to Egypt. Although as far as I know he never published anything, it is quite evident from his papers in my possession that he had become very fully grounded in the new science, which was then only a generation old. His knowledge of hieratic is praised by the sagacious Goodwin, who says, with reference to the date of the calendar on the verso of the Ebers Papyrus: «The numeral attached to the name of the king is neither 3 nor 30 both of which numbers have been suggested but It is due to Mr. Smith,

9.

(1) New York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin, April 1922, p. 4-31.

RECUEIL CHAMPOLLION.

25

whose acquaintance with hieratic texts is very extensive [italics mine], to mention that he pointed this out to me as long ago as 1864, when he communicated to me a copy of the endorsement upon his papyrus (1). » It is evident from these remarks of Goodwin that Edwin Smith was the first scholar to read correctly the date in this famous calendar.

Among Mr. Smith's meager papers handed to me by the New-York Historical Society I find a manuscript containing a remarkable attempt by Mr. Smith at a complete translation of the papyrus which now bears his name. When we recall how scanty was the knowledge of hieratic in the sixties of the last century, when this effort at a translation was written out, not to mention also the very limited knowledge of the Egyptian language itself available at so early a stage of Egyptian studies, it is extraordinary how much of the document Mr. Smith has understood. It should be mentioned here also that of the eight fragments of the papyrus which, as we shall see, Mr. Smith rescued, he was able to place three with exactness and two more at least in their approximate connection. Even as early as 1854 he was able to read correctly a name hitherto undeciphered on a wooden stamp in (2) the Abbot Collection. In spite of the fact that he published nothing it is evident that he was one of the pioneers of Egyptian science. By a curious coincidence the year of his birth 1822 was likewise the memorable year in which Champollion deciphered and read Egyptian hieroglyphic. It is very fitting, therefore, that some mention of this little-known scholar and of the papyrus which bears his name should find a place in a volume which is intended to commemorate the centenary of Champollion's great achievement.

-

During his residence in Luxor, from 1858 to 1876,

(Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, Sept.-Oct. 1873, p. 107 ff. (2) Dr. Caroline Ransom WILLIAMS, The Place of The New York Historical Society in the Growth of American Interest in Egyptology, in The New York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin, April 1920, p. 16.

Mr. Smith met a number of the leading Egyptologists of the time and likewise many of the distinguished English travelers who so frequently visited the Nile in those days. Dr. Caroline R. Williams has noticed in a letter written by Lady Duff Gordon in October 1864 a reference to him as an American Egyptologist at Luxor, a friend of mine", for whom Lady Gordon was securing books to be sent out by her husband). Birch refers to him as having descended with the British Vice-Consul into a tomb shaft ninety feet deep to bring up thirty mummies and their coffins for the entertainment of the Prince of Wales during his visit to Egypt in 1868 (2). In the documents still surviving Mr. Smith's habitual intercourse with eminent sholars and distinguished visitors in Egypt, as well as his scientific knowledge, are quite evident. The reasons for mention of these matters will also be evident as we proceed.

In January 1862, during his stay at Thebes, Mr. Smith purchased the document which is the subject of this article. The fragments of page one, which he put together, are accompanied by a memorandum in his handwriting which reads as follows: These fragments were recovered from a factitious papyrus made up of the fragments from 3 others March 17, 1862, nearly 2 months after the original purchase, Jan. 20, both from Mustapha Aga, and the fragments A. C. were saturated with glue which was removed by maceration and carefully scraping the glue away which had been used to seal the factitious papyrus composed of these fragments. After his death in 1906 Mr. Smith's daughter, Miss Leonora Smith, presented the document to the New York Historical Society, to whose courtesy I owe the permission to publish these preliminary data.

The problem of the provenience of the Edwin Smith Papyrus unfortunately involves us in some reference to

(1) Ibid., p. 16.

(2) Ibid., p. 16-17.

the unjust reflections upon the character of Mr. Smith contained in Ebers' introduction to his papyrus, and also makes it necessary to take up at this point the connection between Papyrus Ebers and the Edwin Smith Papyrus. I trust that the mention of the following facts will be understood only as an unavoidable fulfillment of duty in defending the reputation of Mr. Edwin Smith, and in no sense as a reflection or an attack upon the memory of the gracious and kindly Ebers. It is obvious, however, that Ebers was misled in allowing to escape his pen the

reflections on Mr. Smith which we find in his accounts of his purchase of Papyrus Ebers. He states:

Er empfing meinen Namen gemäss dem Herkommen, dass wichtige Papyrosrollen nach denjenigen Gelehrten oder Freunden der Wissenschaft benannt werden, die sie auf eigene Gefahr in Aegypten erwerben. Daher die Bezeichnung Papyros Salt, Pap. Anastasi, Pap. d'Orbiney, Pap. Harris, etc. (1). „

As far as my knowledge of the early history of Egyptology goes the papyri which Ebers mentions were not given these designations by the original first purchasers themselves but by others, especially by scholars who later, designating them by the names of their first European possessors, found it convenient to identify them in this way. I do not know of another example in the whole range of Egyptological studies in which a scholar has deliberately named an important papyrus after himself. In this connection one may refer to the example of the high-minded Lepsius in naming the Papyrus Westcar after the English lady who presented it to him. The evident eagerness of Ebers to attach his name to the magnificent papyrus he had acquired, betrayed him into unmistakable resentment toward Mr. Edwin Smith, whose name had already become connected with the document. The source of this resentment is thus obvious. As far back as December 1870 Lepsius had published

(1) See Georg EBERS, Papyros Ebers, Leipzig, 1875, p. 2.