Sources for the study of Egyptian medicine

The sources for the study of ancient Egyptian medicine include inscriptional, archaeological and palaeopathological evidence (Ghalioungui 1973). The most significant information regarding the Egyptian concept of the body system, and the medicinal and pharmaceutical treatments they used is preserved in twelve documents known as the Medical Papyri (see p. 186–193); also, funerary biographical texts inscribed on stone tablets (stelae) give the titles and brief career details of some doctors.

Those temples associated with medical training and healing procedures provide limited archaeological evidence; in one, the Temple of Kom Ombo, there is a Roman Period wall-relief, which may depict a set of surgical instruments. Until now, the only identified surgical instruments that have been discovered date to the Graeco-Roman Period; however, it is possible that earlier, but unidentified, examples of surgical appliances may exist in museum collections.

In Egyptian tombs, the wall-reliefs generally represented the tomb owner and his elite contemporaries as stylised figures with a youthful, healthy appearance. By portraying them in this way, and using magical rites to activate the life force in these figures, the Egyptians hoped to ensure that these individuals would spend the afterlife in a state of fitness. Because of this idealisation of the figures, the scenes do not provide an accurate record of the diseases and illnesses suffered by the elite, although signs and symptoms of ill health are sometimes depicted in the representations of servants and labourers.