Page:The Harveian oration 1904.djvu/30

9 THE HARVEIAN ORATION, 1904 distinguished as a physician, a minister of the king, a priest, a writer, an architect, an alchemist, and an astronomer-great in all, but greatest in medicine; so eminent that in the view of Egypt he is a god.

In the reign of Tosorthros, of the third dynasty, five or six thousand years ago, we meet with the wise I-em-hotep in an inscription refer- ring to the seven years of famine which befell Egypt in consequence of a succession of low Niles. He is there the adviser of Pharaoh; to him the king applies in his trouble for counsel and help.' In the inscriptions in the temple of Edfu² he is des- cribed at length as the great priest I-em-hotep, the son of Ptah, who speaks or lectures.³ Perhaps his discourses or lectures were on medicine. Else- where he is described as the writer of the divine books. It may here be remarked that probably Eber's papyrus was one of the six divine books attributed to Thoth ceremonially, but not improbably in large part the work of I-em-hotep. Manetho, while speaking of his eminence as a physician, refers to him also as an architect, the first to build with hewn stone. Not improbably he built the step pyramid of Sakkara, the tomb of his patron Tosorthros." Manetho also suggests that I-em-hotep improved and completed the 1. Maspero, His. Anc. de l'Orient, I, 240 2. See Plate II 3. De Rougé, Insc. du Temps. d'Edfou, II, 89 4. Eusebius on Manetho; Lauth, Manetho und der Turiner Königspapyrus, 144 See Plate III