Edwin Smith (1822April 27, 1906) was an American dealer and collector of antiquities who gave his name to an Ancient Egyptian medical papyrus, the ''

Edwin Smith Papyrus The Edwin Smith Papyrus is an ancient Egyptian medical text, named after Edwin Smith who bought it in 1862, and the oldest known surgical treatise on trauma. From a cited quotation in another text, it may have been known to ancient surgeons as t ...

.''

Biography

Smith was born in

Bridgeport, Connecticut Bridgeport is the List of municipalities in Connecticut, most populous city and a major port in the U.S. state of Connecticut. With a population of 148,654 in 2020, it is also the List of cities by population in New England, fifth-most populous ...

, and lived in Egypt during the latter half of the 19th century. In 1862 he came temporarily into possession of a medical papyrus which was sold by its Egyptian owner to Georg Ebers in 1873 and published by Ebers in 1875. It was thus best known as the '' Ebers Papyrus.'' In 1862 he also purchased the papyrus which came to bear his name, from a dealer called Mustapha Aga at Luxor.Breasted (1922), p. 30 Smith's knowledge of

hieratic Hieratic (; grc, ἱερατικά, hieratiká, priestly) is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BC until the ris ...

was not sufficient to enable him to translate the papyrus, a task which was undertaken by

James Henry Breasted James Henry Breasted (; August 27, 1865 – December 2, 1935) was an American archaeologist, Egyptologist, and historian. After completing his PhD at the University of Berlin in 1894, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago. In 1901 he ...

, aided by Arno B. Luckhardt, a professor of physiology, and led to the publication of the translation in 1930. Edwin Smith died in 1906.

Footnotes

References

* Marshall Clagett, ''Ancient Egyptian Science: A Source Book'', vol. II, Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy, 1995, . *

(editor), ''The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus: Hieroglyphic Transliteration, Translation and Commentary'', 1922, New-York Historical Society. Republished in three volumes in 1930 by University of Chicago Press
Volume IVolume II
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Volume III
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Edwin American Egyptologists 1822 births 1906 deaths People from Bridgeport, Connecticut