Edwin Smith (Egyptologist)

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Edwin Smith (1822 – April 27, 1906) was an American dealer and collector of antiquities who gave his name to an Ancient Egyptian medical papyrus, the Edwin Smith Papyrus.

Smith was born in Bridgeport, 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 to Georg Ebers in 1873 and published by Ebers in 1875.^[3] It was thus best known as the Ebers Papyrus.

In 1862 he also purchased the papyrus which came to bear his name, from a dealer called Mustapha Aga at Luxor.^[4] Smith's knowledge of hieratic was not sufficient to enable him to translate the papyrus, a task which was undertaken by James Henry Breasted, aided by Dr. Arno B. Luckhardt, a professor of physiology, and led to the publication of the translation in 1930.

Edwin Smith died in 1906.

References

Marshall Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science: A Source Book, vol. II, Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy, 1995, isbn 9780871692146.
James Henry Breasted (Editor) The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus: Hieroglyphic Transliteration, Translation and Commentary, 1922, New-York Historical Society

Footnotes

↑ Frederick G. Kilgour Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Volume 44, Issue 5 , Pages 292 - 297, 1993.
↑ Breasted, op.cit., p.9
↑ Clagett, op.cit., p.193
↑ Breasted, op.cit., p.30

Authority control	VIAF: 233547768

Persondata
Name	Smith, Edwin
Alternative names
Short description	American egyptologist
Date of birth	1822
Place of birth
Date of death	1906
Place of death

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