1

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 fater, 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.

some remarks entitled: Einige Bemerkungen ueber denselben Papyrus Smith), and by Papyrus Smith" he designated the magnificent papyrus which with pardonable pride its later purchaser wished should bear the name of Ebers. Evidently without knowledge of Ebers' purchase Goodwin as late as the summer of 1873 calls the document & the Smith Papyrus (2). It is quite evident that the great papyrus which we now know as Papyrus Ebers had already begun to be known in the early seventies as Papyrus Smith. When, therefore, in the spring of 1873 Ebers handed Lepsius a manuscript account of the new and splendid hieratic manuscript which he had so recently acquired, it was very necessary that the name of Edwin Smith be completely dissociated from it. The document which had been discussed by the editor of the Zeitschrift in December 1870 under the title Papyrus Smith was now announced by Ebers in an article entitled « Papyrus Ebers, which appeared in the same Zeitschrift in May-June, 1873, too late, unfortunately, to prevent Goodwin's reference to it as the Smith Papyrus" in the summer or autumn of the same year.

We are now in a position to understand why the otherwise always amiable Ebers permitted himself to accuse Mr. Edwin Smith of having endeavoured to masquerade as the owner of the great papyrus an ownership which Ebers then emphatically denies. And yet Ebers himself characterizes these reflections on Mr. Smith as merely a «suspicion » (Vermuthung)(3).

As far back as 1864 Edwin Smith had already communicated to Goodwin the now famous calendar from the verso of Papyrus Ebers and at that time, as we have shown above, Smith was the first scholar to read the year date 9 correctly. The first mention of the later Papyrus Ebers in scientific literature seems to have been in connection with a hieroglyphic transliteration of the

(1) Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, Dec. 1870, p. 167 ff. (2) A. Z., Sept.-Oct. 1873, p. 107-109.

(3) A. Z., 1873, p. 42, footnote.

calendar published by Brugsch in the summer of 1870 (Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, July-Aug. 1870, p. 108-111). Brugsch says that it was from the Rückseite eines Papyrus" and that he had secured it from the papers of an Egyptological friend in Egypt during the winter of 1869-70. This friend was Eisenlohr who then sent in the hieratic text to Lepsius, intimating that he had not given Brugsch permission to publish it. Lepsius published Eisenlohr's note in December 1870 (Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, pp. 165-167). Eisenlohr states that in February 1870 he visited Edwin Smith in Luxor and that Smith showed him his collection, including «zwei von ihm erworbene Papyrusrollen medicinischen Inhaltes, von welchen die eine über 100, die andere 19 Blätter enthält». In Eisenlohr's above article Lepsius substituted his own more accurate tracing (which he had received from Naville) in place of Eisenlohr's facsimile. Naville had been allowed by Smith to make this tracing in the autumn of 1868 with permission to publish, a permission latergranted orally by Smith to Lepsius in person in Luxor.

Dr. Haigh next published a « Note on the Calendar in Mr. Smith's Papyrus" (A. Z., May-June, 1871, p. 72-73) which adds nothing to the above facts, and Goodwin also wrote Notes on the Calendar in Mr. Smith's Papyrus » (A. Z., Sept-Oct. 1873, p. 107-109). He refers to the document (Papyrus Ebers) as the medical the possession of Mr. Edwin Smith of Luxor ".

papyrus in

The outstanding facts discernible after a careful study of these earlier notices show clearly that at one time both the Papyrus Ebers and the Edwin Smith Papypus were in the physical possession of Mr. Edwin Smith and they were seen in his possession by Eisenlohr, who refers to them both in unmistakable terms. I have seen no evidence in the contemporary documents that Mr. Edwin Smith anywhere stated that he was the owner of Papyrus Ebers, except in the accounts given by Professor Ebers, who, as we have already seen, had very personal reasons for his conclusions. Under these circumstances we can

quite understand how Ebers might easily fall into the efror which led him to the unwarrantable reflections on Mr. Edwin Smith. Mr. Smith, however, did own a large and important medical papyrus, next to the Papyrus Ebers then and now the largest ancient Egyptian medical document in existence. The casual use of the words « von ihm erworbene Papyrusrollen by Eisenlohr are very easily understood by anyone who has purchased antiquities on the Nile and who may have obvious reasons for desiring that the native owners of a valuable monument should not become too well known to Europeans who might become competitive bidders (1).

It would be quite comprehensible if Mr. Smith had made no reference whatever to the ownership of the Papyrus Ebers, but the mere fact of its being in his physical possession at the time might easily create the

("It is possible that the earliest reference to Papyrus Ebers in print was in a sales catalog of antiquities which I have never seen, but which is reported to have appeared in 1869: «In 1869 there appeared in a catalogue of antiquities an advertisement of a large medical papyrus in the possession of Edwin Smith, an American farmer of Luxor near Thebes. This papyrus was said to be in excellent preservation and dated about the middle of the sixteenth century before Christ. The advertisement contained a reproduction of the calendar which was on the back of the papyrus. This calendar aroused an unusual interest among Egyptologists. The first mention of this papyrus in the Egyptian literature was by Birch of London. He was making some notes on the appearance of the name Cheops in the London Papyrus, and incidentally mentioned the existence of the medical papyri of Berlin and Turin and the advertised papyrus of Edwin Smith." (Bayard HOLMES and P. Gad KITTERMAN, Medicine in Ancient Egypt, Cincinnati, The Lancet-Clinic Press, 1914, p. 14.) The authors just quoted seem to be under a misapprehension as to the reference by Birch to an advertised papyrus of Edwin Smith". Birch's article appeared in the A. Z., May-June 1871, and he does indeed refer there to a medical papyrus in possession of Mr. Edwin Smith of Thebes» but he makes no reference to an advertised papyrus". Nor is this reference of Birch the first mention of this papyrus in Egyptian literature. The calendar had been published by Brugsch a year earlier, as we have seenn. The curious reference to the learned Edwin Smith as an American farmer is, as we have seen, decidedly misleading and is so recognized in a letter, included by the authors (ibid. p. 17), from an American tourist who learned nothing regarding Mr. Smith except some vague reminiscences by a person whom he calls the German Consul at Luxor... a Copt, who was, of course, Moharb Todrous.

impression that he owned it, and as he did own the smaller of the two papyri which he showed Eisenlohr it was always true after January 1862 that he owned a large and important medical papyrus. Any statements anywhere in the literature that he was the owner of a medical papyrus may, therefore, be quite true and need not be interpreted as false statements referring to the Papyrus Ebers (1).

The fact that the Papyrus Ebers was so early connected with the Edwin Smith Papyrus might be of some value in discussing the problem of the source and date of the latter document. There is, unfortunately, nothing in Mr. Edwin Smith' papers regarding the reports of the natives from whom he purchased his papyrus, nor any conclusions of his own as to its origin. Ebers says that the native from whom he secured the Papyrus Ebers affirmed that it had been found in a tomb in the Assassif, between the legs of a mummy. The discoverer, however, was at the time of Eber's purchase already dead and it was not possible to identify the tomb. Ebers likewise refers to the possibility that his papyrus belonged to the considerable group purchased by the British Consul Harris in 1857, a group reported to have been found in a Grotte", a rough shaft in the rocks some twenty feet deep by Dêr el-Medîneh. As to the date when the Papyrus Ebers was discovered, Ebers says it was found vor nunmehr vierzehn Jahren ». He does not date the introduction containing this remark, however, and therefore he does not indicate clearly the terminus ad quem from which we should reckon backward his fourteen years. If he means fourteen

(1) I have not overlooked Professor Ebers' very specific statement as to his Vermuthung: - Ich darf diese Vermuthung kühnlich aussprechen, da Mr. Smith meinem verehrten Collegen und Freund Prof. Eisenlohr und mir selbst erzählte, neben dem grossen einen kleinen medicinischen Papyrus zu besitzen. (A. Z., May-June 1873, p. 42, footnote.) Ebers of course, translates besitzen» from some English word used by Smith, which may have been nothing more than the innocent word have”, while the word "own", if used by Smith, may have applied exclusively to the smaller papyrus.