The method of estimating the area of irregular fields and the cubic contents of granaries, &c., is very faulty. It would be interesting to find material of later date, such as Pythagoras is reported to have studied.
See A. Eisenlohr, Ein mathematisches Handbuch der alten Ägypter (Leipzig, 1877); F. Ll. Griffith, “The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus” in Proceedings of the Soc. of Biblical Archaeology, Nov. 1891, March, May and June 1894.
Astronomy.—The brilliant skies of day and night in Egypt favoured the development of astronomy. A papyrus of the Roman period in the British Museum attributes the invention of horoscopes to the Egyptians, but no early instance is known. Professor Petrie has indeed suggested, chiefly on chronological grounds, that a table of stars on the ceiling of the Ramesseum temple and another in the tomb of Rameses VI. (repeated in that of Rameses IX. without alteration) were horoscopes of Rameses II. and VI.; but Mahler’s interpretation of the tables on which this would rest appears to be false. Astronomy played a considerable part in religious matters for fixing the dates of festivals and determining the hours of the night. The titles of several temple books are preserved recording the movements and phases of the sun, moon and stars. The rising of Sothis (Sirius) at the beginning of the inundation was a particularly important point to fix in the yearly calendar (see below, § “Chronology”). The primitive clock[10] of the temple time-keeper (horoscopus), consisting of a ὡρολόγιον καἱ φοίνικα (Clemens Alex. Strom., vi. 4. 35), has been identified with two inscribed objects in the Berlin Museum; these are a palm branch with a sight-slit in the broader end, and a short handle from which a plummet line was hung. The former was held close to the eye, the latter in the other hand, perhaps at arm’s length. From the above-mentioned tables of culmination in the tombs of Rameses VI. and IX. it seems that for fixing the hours of the night a man seated on the ground faced the horoscopus in such a position that the line of observation of the Pole-star passed over the middle of his head. On the different days of the year each hour was determined by a fixed star culminating or nearly culminating in it, and the position of these stars at the time is given in the tables as “in the centre,” “on the left eye,” “on the right shoulder,” &c. According to the texts, in founding or rebuilding temples the north axis was determined by the same apparatus, and we may conclude that it was the usual one for astronomical observations. It is conceivable that in ingenious and careful hands it might give results of a high degree of accuracy.
See L. Borchardt, “Ein altägyptisches astronomisches Instrument” in Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache, xxxvii. (1899), p. 10; Ed. Meyer, Ägyptische Chronologie, p. 36. Besides the sun and moon, five planets, thirty-six dekans, and constellations to which animal and other forms are given, appear in the early astronomical texts and paintings. The zodiacal signs were not introduced till the Ptolemaic period. See H. Brugsch, Die Ägyptologie (Leipzig, 1891), pp. 315 et seqq., for a full account of all these.
Medicine.—Except, that splints are sometimes found on the limbs of bodies of all periods, at present nothing is known, from texts or otherwise, of the existence of Egyptian surgery or dentistry. For historical pathology the examination of mummies and skeletons is yielding good results. There is little sign of the existence of gout or of syphilitic diseases until late times (see [Mummy]). A number of papyri have been discovered containing medical prescriptions. The earliest are of the XIIth Dynasty from Kahūn, one being veterinary, the other gynaecological. The finest non-religious papyrus known, the Ebers Papyrus, is a vast collection of receipts. One section, giving us some of “the mysteries of the physician,” shows how lamentably crude were his notions of the constitution of the body. It teaches little more than that the pulse is felt in every part of the body, that there are vessels leading from the heart to the eyes, ears, nose and all the other members, and that “the breath entering the nose goes to the heart and the lungs.” The prescriptions are for a great variety of ailments and afflictions—diseases of the eye and the stomach, sores and broken bones, to make the hair grow, to keep away snakes, fleas, &c. Purgatives and diuretics are particularly numerous, and the medicines take the form of pillules, draughts, liniments, fumigations, &c. The prescriptions are often fanciful and may thus bear some absurd relation to the disease to be cured, but generally they would be to some extent effective. Their action was assisted by spells, for general use in the preparation or application, or for special diseases. In most cases several ingredients are prescribed together: when the amounts are indicated it is by measure not by weight, and evidently no very potent drugs were employed, for the smallest measure specified is equal to about half of a cubic inch. Little has yet been accomplished in identifying the diseases and the substances named in the medical papyri.
See G. A. Reisner, The Hearst Medical Papyrus (Leipzig, 1905), (XVIIIth Dynasty), and for a great magical text of the Roman period (3rd century a.d.) with some prescriptions, F. Ll. Griffith and H. Thompson, The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden (London, 1904).
Literature.—The vast mass of writing which has come down to us from the ancient Egyptians comprises documents of almost every conceivable kind, business documents and correspondence, legal documents, memorial inscriptions, historical, scientific, didactic, magical and religious literature; also tales and lyrics and other compositions in poetical language. Most of these classes are dealt with in this article under special headings. In addition there should be mentioned the abundant explanatory inscriptions attached to wall-scenes as a secondary element in those compositions. As early as the Middle Kingdom, papyri are found containing classified lists of words, titles, names of cities, &c., and of nomes with their capitals, festivals, deities and sacred things, calendars, &c.
To a great extent the standard works in all classes date from an early age, not later than the Middle Kingdom, and subsequent works of religion and learning like the later additions were largely written in the same style. Several books of proverbs or “instructions” were put in circulation during the Middle Kingdom. Kagemni and Ptahhotp of the Old Kingdom were nominally or really the instructors in manners: King Amenemhē I. laid down the principles of conduct in government for his son Senwosri I., preaching on the text of beneficence rewarded by treachery; Kheti points out in detail to his schoolboy son Pepi the advantages enjoyed by scribes and the miseries of all other careers. Some of these books are known only in copies of the New Kingdom. The instructions of Ani to his son Khenshotp are of later date. In demotic the most notable of such works is a papyrus of the first century a.d. at Leiden.
A number of Egyptian tales are known, dating from the Middle Kingdom and later. Some are so sober and realistic as to make it doubtful whether they are not true biographies and narratives of actual events. Such are the story of Sinūhi, a fugitive to Syria in the reign of Sesostris [Senwosri] I., and perhaps the narrative of Unamun of his expedition in quest of cedar wood for the bark of the Theban Ammon in the XXIst Dynasty. Others are highly imaginative or with miraculous incidents, like the story of the Predestined Prince and the story of the Two Brothers, which begins with a pleasing picture of the industrious farmer, and, in demotic of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, two stories of the learned Sethon Khamois, son of Rameses II. and high priest of Ptah, with his rather tragical experiences at the hands of magicians. The stories of the Middle Kingdom were in choice diction, large portions of them being rhetorical or poetical compositions attributed to the principal characters. The story of Sinūhi is of this description and was much read during the New Kingdom. Another, of the Eloquent Peasant whose ass had been stolen, was only a framework to the rhetoric of endless petitions. The tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor in the Red Sea was a piece of simpler writing, not unpicturesque, of the marvellous type of a Sindbad story. If all these are deficient in literary merit, they are deeply interesting as revelations of primitive mind and manners. Of New Kingdom tales, the story of the Two Brothers is frankly in the simplest speech of everyday life, while others are more stilted. The demotic stories of Khamois are simple, but the “Rape of Inarōs’ Cuirass” (at Vienna) is told in a stiff and high-flown style.
In general it may be said of Egyptian literary compositions that apart from their interest as anthropological documents they possess no merit which would entitle them to survive. They are more or less touched by artificiality, but so far as we are able to appreciate them at present they very seldom attain to any degree of literary beauty. Most of the compositions in the literary language, whether old or archaistic, are in a stilted style and often with parallelisms of phrase like those of Hebrew poetry. Simple prose narrative is here quite exceptional. Some few hymns contain stanzas of ten lines, each line with a break in the middle. There is no sign of rhyming in Egyptian poetry, and the rhythm is not yet recognizable owing to our ignorance of the ancient vocalization. In old Egyptian tales the narrative portions are frequently in prose; New Egyptian and demotic contain as a rule little else. Hymns exist in both of these later forms of the language, and a few love songs in Late Egyptian.