"(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.
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