Edwin Smith Papyrus: The 3,600-Year-Old Textbook of Surgery

In 1862, an American Egyptologist named Edwin Smith bought an ancient scroll of papyrus from an Egyptian dealer. Smith didn’t know how to read it, but he figured it was something important and precious. He kept the papyrus scroll with him until his death in 1906, whereupon his daughter donated the papyrus to the New York Historical Society. It was there the importance of document, now known as the Edwin Smith Papyrus, was first understood. The Edwin Smith Papyrus is a medical document—the world’s oldest surviving text book on surgery. It was created in around 1600 BCE, but careful examination of the writing reveals that the document is only a copy of an even older medical treatise believed to have been written around 3000-2500 BCE. The scribe who copied the Edwin Smith Papyrus from the earlier document in the 17th century BC made many errors, some of which he corrected in the margins. Eventually, he pushed aside the document and left it incomplete, for reason which we may never know. Even uncompleted, the Edwin Smith Papyrus was an important document because it showed for the first time that ancient Egyptians had a far greater knowledge of the human anatomy and medicine than previously thought of. Notably, it showed that the Egyptians’ understanding of traumatic injuries—which the Edwin Smith Papyrus deals with extensively—was based on observable anatomy rather than relying on magic or potion. The Edwin Smith Papyrus may have been a manual for military surgery. It contains 48 cases dealing with wounds and trauma, such as injuries, fractures, wounds, dislocations and tumors. The cases are presented in a format that is not unlike what modern physicians use today.