A Thorny Path

Georg Moritz Ebers, German Egyptologist and novelist, discovered the Egyptian medical papyrus, of ca. 1550 BCE, named for him at Luxor, Thebes, in the winter of 1873–74. Now in the Library of the University of Leipzig, the Ebers Papyrus is among the most important ancient Egyptian medical papyri. It is one of two of the oldest preserved medical documents anywhere—the other being the Edwin Smith Papyrus (ca. 1600 BCE).