Changes

The ancient world is full of many personalities who changed the course of history. The names of these people live on today, thousands of years after they have died in many cases, because they impacted so many aspects of life in the ancient world. Among some of the best known are warriors, such as Miltiades the hero of the Battle of Marathon and Xenophon, who was a veteran of the Peloponnesian War and possibly the world’s first military historian. Kings and statesmen like Pericles of Athens, Ramesses II of Egypt, and Hammurabi of Babylon are also fairly well-known, at least their names are, in the modern world. Of course, one cannot forget some of the world’s greatest thinkers: Socrates, Plato, Archimedes, and Ptolemy were all philosophers and scientists who are rightfully remembered for challenging the status quo and introducing mankind to rational thinking. But long before Ptolemy discovered longitude and latitude and even before Archimedes devised his incredible inventions, there was an engineer, doctor, and thinker named Imhotep who lived in Egypt during the middle of the third millennium BC.

===The Pyramid Inventor===

Uncovering the background of Imhotep has proved to be a Herculean task due to the nature of Egyptian literacy. During the time that Imhotep lived – the Third Dynasty of the Old Kingdom (2600s BC) – pharaonic culture was in one of its earliest phases and although writing had been discovered approximately 500 years earlier, its use was still not widespread. Most extant texts from the period concern religion or the government and few mention anyone by name who is not a member of the royal house. With that said, Imhotep’s deeds were so great that he was briefly mentioned in some contemporary Egyptian texts – the inscription of his name on the base of a statue of King Djoser being one of the more prominent references. <ref> Malek, Jaromir. “The Old Kingdom (c. 2686-2125 BC).” In <i>The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt.</i> Edited by Ian Shaw. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 92</ref>

Djoser’s pyramid dwarfed all other monuments built in Egypt before the king’s reign. Surrounding the pyramid stood a thirty-four foot high, 5,397 foot long limestone wall. Within the confines of the wall, in the shadow of the pyramid, were a number of smaller temples, pavilions, and altars. The pyramid itself was built in six stages, with all of the constituent mastabas combining to a height of 197 feet and containing 11,668,000 cubic feet of stone. <ref>Lehner, pgs. 84-85</ref> Imhotep’s creation was truly magnificent as it inspired Egyptians in the Fourth Dynasty in order to improve upon his methods to ultimately create the first “true pyramids.” As impressive as Imhotep’s efforts were to build Egypt’s first pyramid, he also attained fame for his work in the fields of medicine and general scholarship.

===Imhotep the Doctor and Scholar===

In ancient Egyptian religion, it was not unheard of for a mortal to achieve deified status after his or her death, but the person in question was almost always a king or queen. Imhotep was one of the few exceptions to this rule. Egyptians began worshipping Imhotep about 100 years after his death, but the scholar turned god’s religious following remained relatively minor for nearly 2,000 years. <ref> Wikinson, p. 113</ref> When Egypt entered the phase modern scholars know as the Late Period, Egyptians became much more engaged with their neighbors, with the result being the adoption of some foreign cultural elements by Egyptians and conversely foreigners living in Egypt began to accept and modify some elements of pharaonic culture. When the first Greeks who lived in Egypt saw Egyptians worship Imhotep, they were very impressed by the scholar and his life and so in typical Greek fashion they equated Imhotep with their own Asclepius and joined in with the worship.

The character of Imhotep played a role in the pseudo-historical Late Period tale known as the “Famine Stela” and hymns to the architect turned god can be found in temples far from Djoser’s pyramid. In a doorway in the Temple of Ptah, which is part of the much larger Karnak Temple in Luxor, an inscription dated to the reign of the Roman emperor Augustus honors Imhotep as a god. Part of the inscription read:

Long before Newton, Copernicus, or even Archimedes pushed the limits of human knowledge, an Egyptian scholar named Imhotep introduced science to the ancient world. Imhotep’s greatness as a scholar was due to a combination of his genius and ambition, which allowed him to build the first Egyptian pyramid, practice medicine, and to write tracts that are unfortunately now lost. Those feats alone were enough to make him the greatest scientist in the ancient world, but his reputation was so great that he was eventually worshipped as a god, even by non-Egyptians. Truly, when one considers the greatest minds of the ancient world, Imhotep should be at the top of any list!

===References===