Mummy's Wrap

Magic in Ancient Egypt

The medicinal practices of the ancient Egyptians were renowned throughout the ancient world. In the Odyssey, Homer praises the prowess of the Egyptian physicians and all the plants that produce good medicine and powerful poisons. In times of peace, foreign kings would request Egyptian physicians to be sent to their courts to treat themselves, their royal family and to instruct their own physicians in the healing art of the Egyptians (Stetter: 1993, 52). Despite the world renown and the true ability of the Egyptian physicians, not everything could be cured by the herbal techniques so far described. Many of the more horrific diseases needed a more powerful source of assistance (Brier: 2001, 55).

Dr. Ali Hassan, a specialist in archaeology and religion and former director of the Cairo Museum, once said:

Magic and medicine and the religious motive behind the healing of the ill are hard to separate… In Ancient Egypt, religion and magic carried the same weight; the patient trusted the word of the priest as much as the knowledge of his physician. And naturally one tried to bring in the role of the gods through magic (Stetter: 1993, 101).

It is difficult when discussing ancient Egyptian magic to distinguish between the common everyday magic and religious magic (Brier: 2001, 11). To understand this difficulty, the nature of ancient Egyptian magic must be presented. There were two types of magicians, the lay magician and the priest magician. Most magicians were trained in temples and were thus priests, yet some were the common magician who had no religious background. The latter magician was a rare individual (Brier: 2001, 34). As was mentioned previously, physicians were trained in temple complexes. The fact that both occupations were mostly controlled by the temples, the religious aspect of magical healing cannot be ignored (Pinch: 1994, 133). “Medicine is issued from magic, which is itself only an aspect of religion, and all three, among the Egyptians, remained intimately intermingled with one another” (Halioua: 2005, 10).

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This entry was posted by Page Strong on Saturday, September 5th, 2009 at 17:59 and is filed under Ancient Egypt, Everyday Life, Herbals, medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.