Page:The Harveian oration 1904.djvu/24

THE HARVEIAN ORATION, 1904 7 Greece and Magna Graecia Epidaurus sent forth trained priests to establish Asklepieia at Athens, Cos, or Pergamos.

As the centuries and millenniums passed on the cult of I-em-hotep seems to have become more and more popular In later times, when Greek colonists appeared in Egypt, they gave him the name Imouthes, and applied to his temples the Greek term 'Asklepieia,' clearly regarding him as alike in kind to the Greek Asklepios and his temples as hospitals for the sick. The following phrase occurs in the Serapeum Greek papyrus:- 'Tò pòs Méupu uéya 'Aokλnwielov '1

The great temple stood outside the eastern wall of Memphis close to the Serapeum. We may reasonably hope that a careful examination of the site may yet reveal to us traces of the temple and perhaps even the tomb and remains of I-em-hotep himself. Some of those who are present to-day when visiting the site of the temple of I-em-hotep have been impressed by the thought that on this spot, long before Asklepios, the source, or Hippocrates, commonly called the father of medicine, were born, probably before the Homeric poems were written, before the Israelites were in Egypt, before the Stone Age had passed, learned men here devoted themselves to the consideration 1. Peyron, Acad. Sc. de Torino., Ser. II, Tom. III, 1841, p. 40