The number of medical texts is extremely small; but at least one of them has great merit because it introduces us to Egyptian thought. It is a papyrus purchased in Thebes in 1862 by Edwin Smith, now in New York. The copy goes back to the XIII dynasty; the language, however, seems to date back to the ancient kingdom. The 17 columns of the obverse (it is more than 4.50 meters long) give a treatise on surgery. They are cases concerning the bone system and follow each other with the top-down method. Ten refer to the skull, seven to the nose, ten to the ear, jaw, lips, five to the shoulder, nine to the chest, others to the spine (with which it stops). Each case has a general title: “Instructions for (such disease)”. Then comes the symptomatic: “If you examine someone who has (these symptoms)”; then the diagnosis: “Say the other four medical collections we have, the Ebers papyrus in Leipzig, the one in Berlin (no.3032), the one in London (no.10.059) and the Hearst papyrus in the University of California, are zibaldoni of sometimes filthy medical prescriptions, of magic of no value to science, although useful for popular psychology. They lack order and discussion; they do not run into unfavorable prognostics, because everything is possible with magic. They do not belong to science, but to vulgar empiricism. Most notable are the treatises on veterinary and gynecology discovered in Illāhūn (XII dynasty). of magic formulas of no value to science, although useful for popular psychology. They lack order and discussion; they do not run into unfavorable prognostics, because everything is possible with magic. They do not belong to science, but to vulgar empiricism. Most notable are the treatises on veterinary and gynecology discovered in Illāhūn (XII dynasty). of magic formulas of no value to science, although useful for popular psychology. They lack order and discussion; they do not run into unfavorable prognostics, because everything is possible with magic. They do not belong to science, but to vulgar empiricism. Most notable are the treatises on veterinary and gynecology discovered in Illāhūn (XII dynasty).
For mathematics, documents are even more scarce. The fragments of Illāhūn, preserved in Berlin, a papyrus in Moscow, seem to be the remains of manuals for computers, with multiplication and division of numbers and fractions, measures of capacity, problems of geometry. The Rhind papyrus, purchased in 1858 in Thebes and discovered, it seems, in the ruins of the Ramesseo with the Smith papyrus, is a copy made at the time of the Hyksos of a treatise composed under Amenemḥê’e III (1845-1797 BC). The introduction deals with fractions with numerator 2; arithmetic, measurements (volumes, cubes, areas, inclination angles), arithmetic problems follow. Perhaps destined for the practical needs of the accounting scribes, the papyrus shows us the results of a scientific reflection that is several times centuries old.
According to baglib.com, Papyrus and ostraca bring back planimetric reliefs of buildings; a papyrus of Turin gives the plan of the tomb of Rameśśêśe IV in the Valley of the kings which was found to be very exact. The very precious fragments of the same museum that reproduce a gold-bearing area of Wādī el-Ḥammāmāt, explored by Sethosis I. There are traces of the mountains, the valleys, the buildings, the wells, the roads that led to the sea, varying the color according to the circumstances.
Even relative to astronomy, there is little left. The lists of the 36 decans (10th zones in the zodiac) already appear on the sarcophagi of the 10th dynasty. In the tombs of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, constellations and tables are depicted for calculating the hours according to the appearance of the stars. An inscription from Thebes tells us about a certain Amenemḥê’e who built a sundial for the pharaoh Amenḥq̂tpe I. Since he says he studied on books, certainly only by chance these works, like many others, have not come down to us so far. We have a meager compensation in some astrological texts that indicate the auspicious or inauspicious quality of the days (Illāhūn papyrus, British Museum papyrus n. 10.474), sometimes giving the mythological motif (pap. Sallier IV, other in Turin).
The hymns to all the divinities abound and not even they are useless to know the sentiments of those who wrote them. Of the best known, even in ancient times, was the hymn to the Nile, handed down by two manuscripts from the British Museum and a better one from the Turin museum, partially from ostraca. Thanks to God for all the gifts he gives to the country. Another, full of sentiment and lyricism, is that of the sun god Aton venerated in Tell el-‛Amārnah and reproduced in the tombs of that city. Many were directed to the god Ammon. A very long one, from the time of Amenḥq̂tpe II, is in Cairo. In a papyrus written for the temple of the god Sobek in Fayyūm there is a collection of archaic verses with which the pharaoh’s crowns were prayed, considered as goddesses. Many religious texts transmit the stelae to us, some of a popular character,
