Edwin Smith (Egyptologist)
Edwin Smith | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Edwin Smith painted 1847 byFrancesco Anelli,in the collection of theNew-York Historical Society. | |
| Born | 1822 Bridgeport, Connecticut |
| Died | April 27, 1906(aged 83–84) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation(s) | dealer and collector of antiquities |
| Known for | Edwin Smith Papyrus |
Edwin Smith(1822 – April 27, 1906) was an American dealer and collector of antiquities who gave his name to anAncient Egyptianmedical papyrus,theEdwin Smith Papyrus.
Life
[edit]Smith was born inBridgeport, Connecticut,[1][2]and lived in Egypt during the latter half of the 19th century. In 1862 he came temporarily into possession of a medical papyrus which was sold by its Egyptian owner toGeorg Ebersin 1873 and published by Ebers in 1875.[3]It was thus best known as theEbers Papyrus.
In 1862 he also purchased the papyrus which came to bear his name, theEdwin Smith Papyrus,from a dealer called Mustapha Aga atLuxor.[4]Smith's knowledge ofhieraticwas not sufficient to enable him to translate the papyrus, a task which was undertaken byJames Henry Breasted,aided byArno B. Luckhardt,a professor of physiology, and led to the publication of the translation in 1930.
Some two months after he purchased the Edwin Smith Papyrus, he was sold a forged papyrus made by gluing miscellaneous papyrus fragments onto a roll. Discovering the forgery, he separated the fragments, some of which belonged to the Edwin Smith Papyrus, and put those into their places in the papyrus. Some of the remaining fragments, traced to theRhind Mathematical Papyrus,are now kept with the Edwin Smith Papyrus in theBrooklyn Museum.[5]
Edwin Smith died in 1906.
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^Frederick G. KilgourJournal of the American Society for Information Science,Volume 44, Issue 5, Pages 292 - 297, 1993.
- ^Breasted (1922), p.9
- ^Clagett (1995), p.193
- ^Breasted (1922), p. 30
- ^Guggenbühl, Laura(October 1964). Eves, Howard (ed.). "The New York fragments of the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus". Historically Speaking.The Mathematics Teacher.57(6): 406–410.doi:10.5951/mt.57.6.0406.JSTOR27957095.
References
[edit]- Marshall Clagett,Ancient Egyptian Science: A Source Book,vol. II, Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy, 1995,ISBN9780871692146.
- James Henry Breasted(editor),The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus: Hieroglyphic Transliteration, Translation and Commentary,1922,New-York Historical Society.Republished in three volumes in 1930 byUniversity of Chicago Press:Volume I;Volume II;andVolume III.
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