that of a physician--guide, philosopher and
friend of the king--a man in a position of wide trust and importance.
On leaving Cairo, to go up the Nile, one sees on the right in the desert
behind Memphis a terraced pyramid 190 feet in height, "the first large
structure of stone known in history." It is the royal tomb of Zoser, the
first of a long series with which the Egyptian monarchy sought "to adorn
the coming bulk of death." The design of this is attributed to Imhotep,
the first figure of a physician to stand out clearly from the mists of
antiquity. "In priestly wisdom, in magic, in the formulation of wise
proverbs, in medicine and architecture, this remarkable figure of
Zoser's reign left so notable a reputation that his name was never
forgotten, and 2500 years after his death he had become a God of
Medicine, in whom the Greeks, who called him Imouthes, recognized their
own AEsculapius."(3) He became a popular god, not only healing men when
alive, but taking good care of them in the journeys after death. The
facts about this medicinae primus inventor, as he has been called, may
be gathered from Kurt Sethe's study.(4) He seems to have corresponded
very much to the Greek Asklepios. As a god he is met with comparatively
late, between 700 and 332 B.C. Numerous bronze figures of him remain.
The oldest memorial mentioning him is a statue of one of his priests,
Amasis (No. 14765 in the British Museum). Ptolemy V dedicated to him a
temple on the island of Philae. His cult increased much in later days,
and a special temple was dedicated to him near Memphis Sethe suggests
that the cult of Imhotep gave the inspiration to the Hermetic
literature. The association of Imhotep with the famous temple at Edfu is
of special interest.

(3) Breasted: A History of the Ancient Egyptians, Scribner,
New York, 1908, p. 104.

(4) K. Sethe: Imhotep, der Asklepios der Aegypter, Leipzig,
1909 (Untersuchungen, etc., ed. Sethe, Vol. II, No. 4).

Egypt became a centre from which civilization spread to the other
peoples of the Mediterranean. For long centuries, to be learned in all
the wisdom of the Egyptians meant the possession of all knowledge. We
must come to the land of the Nile for the origin of many of man's
most distinctive and highly cherished beliefs. Not only is there a
magnificent material civilization, but in records so marvellously
preserved in stone we may see, as in a glass, here clearly, there
darkly, the pic