Papyrus is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book.
The Book of the Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom to around 50 BC. The original Egyptian name for the text, transliterated r(ꜣ)w n(y)w prt m hrw(w), is translated as Book of Coming Forth by Day or Book of Emerging Forth into the Light. "Book" is the closest term to describe the loose collection of texts consisting of a number of magic spells intended to assist a dead person's journey through the Duat, or underworld, and into the afterlife and written by many priests over a period of about 1,000 years. Karl Richard Lepsius introduced for these texts the German name Todtenbuch, translated to English as Book of the Dead.
The Story of Sinuhe is a work of ancient Egyptian literature. It was likely composed in the beginning of the Twelfth Dynasty after the death of Amenemhat I. The tale describes an Egyptian man who flees his kingdom, and lives as a foreigner before returning to Egypt shortly before his death. It explores universal themes such as divine providence and mercy. The oldest known copy of the text dates to the reign of Amenemhat III, around 1800 BCE. The work was so popular within Egypt that newer copies have been found ranging up to 750 years after the original.
The Ramesseum is the memorial temple of Pharaoh Ramesses II. It is located in the Theban Necropolis in Upper Egypt, on the west of the River Nile, across from the modern city of Luxor. The name – or at least its French form Rhamesséion – was coined by Jean-François Champollion, who visited the ruins of the site in 1829 and first identified the hieroglyphs making up Ramesses's names and titles on the walls. It was originally called the House of millions of years of Usermaatra-setepenra that unites with Thebes-the-city in the domain of Amon.Usermaatra-setepenra was the prenomen of Ramesses II.
Ancient Egyptian mathematics is the mathematics that was developed and used in Ancient Egypt c. 3000 to c. 300 BCE, from the Old Kingdom of Egypt until roughly the beginning of Hellenistic Egypt. The ancient Egyptians utilized a numeral system for counting and solving written mathematical problems, often involving multiplication and fractions. Evidence for Egyptian mathematics is limited to a scarce amount of surviving sources written on papyrus. From these texts it is known that ancient Egyptians understood concepts of geometry, such as determining the surface area and volume of three-dimensional shapes useful for architectural engineering, and algebra, such as the false position method and quadratic equations.
The Vergilius Romanus, also known as the Roman Vergil, is a 5th-century illustrated manuscript of the works of Virgil. It contains the Aeneid, the Georgics, and some of the Eclogues. It is one of the oldest and most important Vergilian manuscripts. It is 332 by 323 mm with 309 vellum folios. It was written in rustic capitals with 18 lines per page.
The Papyrus of Ani is a papyrus manuscript in the form of a scroll with cursive hieroglyphs and color illustrations that was created c. 1250 BCE, during the Nineteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt. Egyptians compiled an individualized book for certain people upon their death, called the Book of Going Forth by Day, more commonly known as the Book of the Dead, typically containing declarations and spells to help the deceased in their afterlife. The Papyrus of Ani is the manuscript compiled for the Theban scribe Ani.
The four sons of Horus were a group of four deities in ancient Egyptian religion who were believed to protect deceased people in the afterlife. Beginning in the First Intermediate Period of Egyptian history, Imsety, Hapy, Duamutef, and Qebehsenuef were especially connected with the four canopic jars that housed the internal organs that were removed from the body of the deceased during the process of mummification. Most commonly, Imsety protected the liver, Hapy the lungs, Duamutef the stomach, and Qebehsenuef the intestines, but this pattern often varied. The canopic jars were given lids that represented the heads of the sons of Horus. Although they were originally portrayed as humans, in the latter part of the New Kingdom, they took on their most distinctive iconography, in which Imsety is portrayed as a human, Hapy as a baboon, Duamutef as a jackal, and Qebehsenuef as a falcon. The four sons were also linked with stars in the sky, with regions of Egypt, and with the cardinal directions.
Spanning over three thousand years, ancient Egypt was not one stable civilization but in constant change and upheaval, commonly split into periods by historians. Likewise, ancient Egyptian architecture is not one style, but a set of styles differing over time but with some commonalities.
The Ichneutae, also known as the Searchers, Trackers or Tracking Satyrs, is a fragmentary satyr play by the fifth-century BC Athenian dramatist Sophocles. Three nondescript quotations in ancient authors were all that was known of the play until 1912, when the extensive remains of a second-century CE papyrus roll of the Ichneutae were published among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. With more than four hundred lines surviving in their entirety or in part, the Ichneutae is now the best preserved ancient satyr play after Euripides' Cyclops, the only fully extant example of the genre. The manuscript is now kept in the British Library in London.
The Onomasticon of Amenope is an ancient Egyptian text from the late 20th Dynasty to 22nd Dynasty. It is a compilation belonging to a tradition that began in the Middle Kingdom, and which includes the Ramesseum Onomasticon dating from the end of the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt, no earlier than the reign of Ramesses IX. Nine copies of the document are known, of which the original Golenischeff copy is the most complete. It is an administrative/literary categorization of 610 entities organized hierarchically, rather than a list of words (glossary). It is known from ten fragments including versions on papyrus, board, leather, and pottery.
The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus is one of the best known examples of ancient Egyptian mathematics. It is named after Alexander Henry Rhind, a Scottish antiquarian, who purchased the papyrus in 1858 in Luxor, Egypt; it was apparently found during illegal excavations in or near the Ramesseum. It dates to around 1550 BC. The British Museum, where the majority of the papyrus is now kept, acquired it in 1865 along with the Egyptian Mathematical Leather Roll, also owned by Henry Rhind. There are a few small fragments held by the Brooklyn Museum in New York City and an 18 cm (7.1 in) central section is missing. It is one of the two well-known Mathematical Papyri along with the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus. The Rhind Papyrus is larger than the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus, while the latter is older.
Alexander Henry Rhind was a Scottish antiquarian and archaeologist.
The Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus is the oldest known medical text in Egyptian history, dated to c. 1825 BCE, during the Twelfth Dynasty. The Papyrus addresses gynecological health concerns, pregnancy, fertility, and various treatments.
Egyptian medical papyri are ancient Egyptian texts written on papyrus which permit a glimpse at medical procedures and practices in ancient Egypt. These papyri give details on disease, diagnosis, and remedies of disease, which include herbal remedies, surgery, and magical incantations. Many of these papyri have been lost due to grave robbery. The largest study of the medical papyri to date has been undertaken by Humboldt University of Berlin and was titled Medizin der alten Ägypter.
The Ramesseum medical papyri constitute a collection of ancient Egyptian medical documents dating back to the early 18th century BC, found in the temple of the Ramesseum. As with most ancient Egyptian medical papyri, these documents mainly dealt with ailments, diseases, the structure of the body, and proposed remedies used to heal these afflictions, namely ophthalmologic ailments, gynaecology, muscles, tendons, and diseases of children. It is the only well-known papyrus to describe these in great detail. Most of the text written in the known manuscripts of this collection are in parts III, IV, and V, and written in vertical columns.
The Greenfield Papyrus is a papyrus that contains an ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead and is named after Mrs. Edith Mary Greenfield, who presented it to the Trustees of the British Museum in May 1910. Now in the collections of the British Museum, London, it is one of the longest papyri in existence with a length of 37 metres.
In Ancient Egyptian religion, Medjed is a minor deity mentioned in certain copies of the Book of the Dead. While not much is known about the deity, his ghost-like depiction in the Greenfield papyrus has earned him popularity in modern Japanese culture, and he has appeared as a character in video games and anime.
The Kadesh inscriptions or Qadesh inscriptions are a variety of Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions describing the Battle of Kadesh. The combined evidence in the form of texts and wall reliefs provide the best documented description of a battle in all of ancient history.
The Ramesseum magician's box is a container discovered in 1885–1886 in a tomb underneath the Ramesseum by Flinders Petrie and James Quibell, containing papyri and items related to magical practices.
Weitzmann, Kurt. Illustrations in Roll and Codex. Princeton University Press, 1970.
