Great Myths and Legends: Imhotep: From Architect to Deity to Villain

thank you very much Steve and thank you to all of you coming out tonight to kick off our lecture series it's going to be my pleasure to explain to you a little bit about our friend Imhotep this evening now some of you if I say the name in hotep you may think of this character here or depending on your age and your fascination with cheesy Hollywood films this character may come closer to mind but we're going to sort of step back a little bit from Hollywood's presentation of Imhotep and take a look at this man and we're going to look at the historical information we have available about him contemporary with his life and then we will see how his his legend grows in ancient Egypt so much so that he will eventually become deified and so we'll walk through that process in ancient Egyptian Pantheon as you all are very well aware there were sort of a dazzling array of gods and goddesses many many many tens even hundreds and there were different types of gods and goddesses in the Egyptian Pantheon some animal-headed some human-headed some animal completely animal forms some completely human form some that were composite creatures and then there were a few figures who were added to the Egyptian Pantheon who were actual living people and our topic of our talk tonight Imhotep is an example of one of these historical characters who for reasons of his abilities intelligence was incorporated over the course of many centuries as we'll see into the Egyptian pantheon on the slide you see an image of Imhotep here on the left and on I'm sorry on the little on this side you see a Mota on the other side you see another one of these real people who was also deified and added to the Egyptian Pantheon a man by the name of Amenhotep son of hapa and we will see there's a close relationship in many ways to these two figures although their history and their origins are quite different when we consider the figure of the hoteth there are many attributes that he has given many jobs that he has said to have done um he is said to have been an architect a priest a royal councilor an author a physician he's credited with all of these fabulous things Dietrich Ville dong have wrote a book about these daya fide humans in hotep and Amenhotep son of hapu and he describes in hotep as one of the greatest intellects of the first great period in the early old kingdom and perhaps he is the first individual personality we know at all so very sort of high praise for our figure of the hotel when we take a look at what early gypped ologists had to say about Imhotep and here you see a quote by the famous Egyptologist and historian James Henry breasted he says in priestly wisdom in magic and the formulation of wise proverbs and medicine and architecture the remarkable figure of Joseph's reign left so notable a reputation that his name was never forgotten the people sang of his proverbs centuries later and 2500 years after his death he had become a God of medicine so again we see the fantastic things that this individual is credited with doing medicine is a realm in which M hotta plays a large part in ancient Egypt and here a quote by Sir William Osler one of the founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital he says that he was the first figure of to stand out clearly from the midst event from the missus of antiquity again very high praise when we look at what the ancient Egyptians had to say about Imhotep and there are many hymns and prayers written about in hoteth and praise of Imhotep we see a similar sort of high praise and high honors being lauded on to this man he is called a God born a God a divine offspring of Toth who is also the god engendered in Memphis August child the wonderful the mighty very very high praise for this individual and a far cry I think from our maniacal crazed Imhotep of movie times since we are at Penn and since this man here is very important to all of us here in at Penn and in the city of Philadelphia I would like to suggest that rather than consider in hotep as a maniacal movie monster we might want to consider him a polymath along the lines have been Franklin Ben Franklin as you all know is credited with many inventions he was an author he was a collector of wise words and aphorisms and proverbs that were written down an inventor all of these wonderful things very much in the same way that 5,000 years before Imhotep was so let's take a look at what we can say about him sort of historically things that we know contemporary from his lifespan you can see here the dates when he he lived so he lived roughly around 26 50 2600 BCE this is during Egypt's third dynasty so sometimes that is considered the early part of the the Old Kingdom and so you see the dates there for the third dynasty as well his name like most ancient Egyptian name actually can be read as a sentence it has meaning his name in ancient Egyptian was EEM hata which means the one who comes in peace or something to that effect the word het up that you see here is a word that means peace are peaceful this name and Egyptian is then later written as or understood as amethyst in Greek so sometimes you will see references to the God amethyst and this is our in hotel as far as his family background we are fairly certain that his mother was a woman by the name of Kara doing and here you see a much later representation of her from the Ptolemaic period and we'll talk a little bit more about his his father when we get into the the myth of Adam hotep and his his deification as far as texts from the time period when he lived that tell us anything about Imhotep we are severely limited actually we're looking at the base of a statue here the statue you can't see it now but there would have been feet belonging to King Djoser the king under whom Imhotep served on the front of the statue you see the names and titles of Imhotep so he is called the seal bearer or the Chancellor to the king of lower egypt a subordinate to the king of upper egypt now those are going to be the same person and that will be our King Djoser he's an administrator of the great domain an administrator of the pot he's a high priest in Heliopolis and he is the chief of sculptors of the Masons and of the producers of stone vessels so from this inscription we can see that he has titles that connect him to the royal court connect him quite closely to the king we can see that he has priestly titles the high priest of Heliopolis would be the high priest of ray the sun god ray and so to situate us on the map Heliopolis is located here nowadays it is a basically a part of Kyra was originally a suburb of Cairo that's now been taken up into the the main city itself and so this is where we're were being located here Jo's er the king his pyramid for which we will see in a moment Imhotep is responsible for the construction of was located at saqqara and at the time of the 3rd dynasty Memphis is going to be our capital city so during the lifespan of Imhotep he is going to be living and working in and around the mem fight area it is fairly certain that his career likely spanned the reign of several kings from the late second dynasty into the third dynasty it is possible that he began work as an architect as a builder under the reign of King kostik M we that may name may sound familiar to some of you because in our lower Egyptian gallery we have a very large calcite alabaster vessel that's very large that bears the name of this king because the can we is succeeded by a king by the name of nebka we then have our King Djoser who is also who's known content at contemporarily as Natura ket and then Djoser is followed very briefly by a king by the name of Horus second cat who also bears the name of Jose or T or Joseph Teti so it's during the reigns of these Kings that Imhotep is active and here just to refresh our memories again we'll be dealing with the Memphis and Sakura area under King Djoser it was in hotels responsibility to plan and essentially execute the construction of dozers funerary monument and here you see some lovely images reconstructions if you will of the king planning and discussing the the building of this with his his architect Imhotep and there's also you can look at it and this this possibility as well you know maybe the discussion wasn't always so serious Imhotep plan and what he eventually executed was an architectural marvel it was the Step Pyramid at Saqqara was the first monumental stone construction in the world and it began sort of as an experiment it seems prior to the construction of the Step Pyramid royal funerary monuments tend to be built in the form that we call a mastaba which you see here sort of bench like structure and it seems that at the the core at the center of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara was one of these last opposed and then there was a an elaboration an experiment that that paid off in the end to sort of stack a whole essentially stack a whole series of these mastaba so that we wind up with six different levels forming what is our first pyramid in in Egypt now the funerary monument that Imhotep was responsible for at saqqara isn't limited only to the Step Pyramid itself that is of course the the central focus of this complex this large funerary complex but it was a massive complex that content that contained all sorts of other subsidiary buildings shrines subterranean burial chambers it was a massive undertaking and and still today incredibly well preserved if you visit the site of Saqqara you can see the wonders that Imhotep was able to produce and this experiment will lead to our true pyramid form that we will see in succeeding reigns of Kings sort of culminating in the massive Pyramids at Giza the Great Pyramid and the two smaller pyramids there so it's really amount up should be given credit for this in a way this idea of the the pyramid structure after the the death of Djoser it is possible as I mentioned that in hotep continue to work for Joseph's successor and this is this King second cat and at the site of Saqqara there is a somewhat ambiguous intriguing monument located quite close to the joes or complex here and so this is the area that i'm talking about and this is known as the unfinished pyramid or the Buried pyramid with this pyramid which seems to have been the burial place for this kings ahem yet the the pyramid structure on top was never finished Sekhmet did not live very long and it seems that perhaps the building of the pyramid on top was halted at his death and we suggest we say that it's possible that in hota is involved with this operation because there is a sort of a tantalizing bit of evidence in the the construction here a small graffito bearing the name of Imhotep no you may look at that and say you're crazy I don't see anything but there are you may have to trust me on this one the signs of traces of the signs there that bear his name so you may be able to make out traces of this reed leaf with walking legs and the M the owl M here there so his name is on this monument it's possible that this was something with which he was involved that pretty much brings us to the end of our historical documentation of him hotep during his lifespan but it's by no means the end of our story with him hotel we've seen that he is an architect we know he had priestly titles we know he had royal appointments and was closely connected to the king and the administration one of the other things that impo taught this credited with being is an author and we can see in texts from a slightly from later periods mentions of Imhotep named as a wise sage and a great author so I draw your attention to this text here one of a genre of text that we refer to as the Harper songs this one is from the tomb of King in teff and if you're interested in reading this in more detail you can look at the Merriam liftime ancient Egyptian literature volumes so this is in the first volume the old and Middle Kingdom what we have in these Harper songs is a description about how life sort of sort of ends and you know what happens to you when when you pass on and what we see here in the text is it says a generation passes another stays since the time of the ancestors the gods who were before rest in their tombs blessed Nobles are also in their tombs yet those who built tombs their places have gone what has become of them and then the author says I have heard the words of Imhotep and jeta whose sayings are recited in whole so this part of the text is telling us that this author was aware of writings or sayings that were composed by or credited to these two sages in hotep or whom we do not have any preserved wisdom texts and jedf for whom we do have a wisdom text a temporary wisdom texts so he is mentioned here as having been an author but we don't have his his texts in a similar vein we see this text on on papyrus Chester Beatty for which is in Miriam lick Times New Kingdom ancient Egyptian literature volume and this tack seems to talk about the importance of writing the importance of being ascribed the importance of knowing wise words the importance of education and instruction really is what this text is trying to get across and the author of this text says if you want to accomplish anything become expert in writing those writers of knowledge from the times of events after the gods those who foretold the future their names have become fixed for eternity so if you want to live forever if you want to continue on forever get things down and writing have your words your wise words recorded Scrolls are more useful than tombstones then building a solid enclosure words act like a chapel there a way in which your memory will go on forever and ever the author then further goes on to say in very similar lines to what we saw the text before is there anyone here like hor Jadhav is there another like Imhotep that's our in hotel there is no family born for us like Nefertiti their leader let me remind you of the name of tanja hoody is there another like Tahoe type Kairos - these are all sages men who wrote down wisdom texts some of whom we have preserved to us and some of whom like Imhotep so we don't have preserved but this text lets us know that there was at least a a belief that in hotel had been a sage had been ascribed who composed wise words that were studied that were memorized and that were taken to heart and that were put in the Canon with these other important sages of ancient Egyptian wisdom literature there is also a possibility that moving from the Harper songs and from instruction texts to the realm of ancient Egyptian stories that in hotep would have been a part of a very famous collection of stories that comes to us under the heading the modern title of papyrus west scar sometimes papyrus west scar is referred to as the three tales of wonder in actual fact there were more than three tales preserved and more than three tales originally part of this papyrus but some of them are fragmentary and haven't been included in the the very beginning part of this text it seems that the setting is the court of King Khufu the builder of the Great Pyramid and we're told that the king is bored and he wants entertainment and so each one of his sons has a story to tell takes turns telling a story to the king and the sunset these stories in the past and each of these stories involves a lector priest so if someone who has a priestly title who also happens to be a magician hence the the tales of wonder we are we see from the stories that are preserved in their entirety that Khufu is very pleased with each of these tales and after each son has a chance to to tell his story the King off offers offerings to the lector priests to the magicians and so he you know he offers his his reward for entertainment the first tale is that in the court of King Djoser and you can see from the preserved here that it's it's very very fragmentary we don't have very much left of this tale at all but it is possible that the Lecter Priest that would have been a part of this story set during the reign of Joe's er would have been our Imhotep but his name is not preserved so we have to put this one in the possible category now if we jump forward quite a number of years to the Ptolemaic period we see another monument another tale in a way a oil inscription here that is inscribed on a rock on an island near the city of Aswan and so here our map we are down here all the way at the South Island Fantini island here and so this Stila which you see here is carved on one of the rocks nearby to elephantine island this story is set during the reign of King Joseph so we're back again in dynasty 3 however it was inscribed on this rock during the Ptolemaic period so it is a Ptolemaic period composition but set way back in the past and what we see in this in the text on this stele up and as you can see it's quite quite wrong I think it's something like 42 columns of text I'm at the beginning of the story we learned that there is a terrible famine in Egypt during the reign of King Djoser and the king is very upset he doesn't know what to do how is he going to help the country you can see from the text here grain is scant every man robbed his twin children cried so it's a terrible terrible situation that the country finds itself in and since the king is the person who supposed to make things better control maintain Mata and order it's really bothering the king that that this problem has occurred what does he do I consulted one of the staff of the Ibis that's our God thought the chief lecture priest Imhotep son of taw south of the wall he departed and he returned to me quickly and he let me know sort of this solution to the problem and so in hotep goes away he comes back and he says there is this this place in Egypt it's called elephantine a this is where there is a god known and kanoon is the one who is responsible for the inundation and if you want to make him happy you need to do something for khanoom and then the waters will flow again then the land will be able to be irrigated and agriculture will come back and so this is what the King does the King listens to the advice of Imhotep and fixes up the temple to come to our our Creator God kinome who you see here and lo and behold the problem is solved so in hotep is credited with helping the King solve the problem in in the Stila here we also see works from quite late in Egyptian history that feature in hotep and feature in hotep in a very positive way there is a domotic text of high risk Carlsberg 85 which kind of goes under the title of the life of Imhotep and it dates to the 1st or 2nd century CE and in this papyrus which is somewhat fragmentary we learn there are episodes snippets of the life of Imhotep and some of his his works the things he does are described in this text and King Djoser is mentioned as well so 3000 years roughly after the the death of Imhotep he is still inspiring authors to explain things about his life to include legends and stories and myths about his life in literature there is another text this time written in Greek known as the praise of amethyst or Asclepius and in this text we learned that there is a priest who is in a temple a Greek priest in an Egyptian temple who finds an old papyrus and it's written in Egyptian and this priest can't read it because it's written an Egyptian he sets out to try and translate it it's too hard for him to read the egyptian text any of us who have studied ancient egyptian know that feeling and so the priest you know gets so tired of trying to do this he falls asleep and he has a dream where a giant God appears to him and lo and behold this giant God is kind of angry that the priest gave up on translating the papyrus and sort of informs the the priest who he is and the priest then recognizes that this God who came to him is the goddess clevis the Greek god of healing but it's Asclepius who is actually the ancient egyptian figure of Imhotep and so in the text he he recognizes the God and says as the inventor of writing Oh Asclepius greatest of the gods as the teacher of writings you are greatly esteemed by the gratitude of all people and all of these things are done for you and this phrase should sound a little bit familiar a book is an immortal recompense which over time is renewed in the memory does that sound like you know their words made them remembered every Greek tongue will report your story and every Greek man will venerate the son of taw amethyst so that is our and hotel so this connection is made between the Greek goddess levius god of healing and our figure of him hotep so we have looked at him as an architect as a priest as a counselor as an author possibly and we have now seen this mention of him as a deity or this mention of him as a son of the God taw his deification and his incorporation into the Egyptian Pantheon is going to take there will be a series of steps a series of phases that this goes through it's not that he will immediately appear on the scene full-blown as a as a god but when he finally does become recognized throughout Egypt as a God it is sort of primarily with his association with healing and his abilities suppose that abilities as a physician that he will become most famous here just a nice rendering of priests carrying out offerings carrying out a ritual a healing ritual you know this is a fantasy imagined seen before an image of the God and hotep here so with him ho temps rise to deification or becoming a deity as I said it takes a number of steps what we can see with the figure of emotive with the person I've been hotel is that as a real person he had an important position in the world court right he's the architect the designer of the Step Pyramid then we see him being thought of and considered as a wise sage and a supposed offer of wisdom texts he then will become adopted this figure of them hotep will become adopted by scribes and he will become for them their special patron but when this happens in and around the New Kingdom he's not being worshipped throughout Egypt as a God he's being revered specifically by scribes it will take a number of generations before he becomes recognized fully as as a God sort of throughout all of Egypt seems like initially he is deified in the Memphis area this seems to happen around dynasty 26 so remember Memphis that is where his his work was centered while he was alive he becomes very important in men fight temples he becomes one of the most important deities in the Memphis area we see his recognition as a great healer around dynasty thirty becomes quite an important part of his his cult we see that Kings in dynasty thirty the Egyptian kings Nicktoons a bow ii for example show reverence to his cult and call themselves you know patrons of or sons of Imhotep the son of Toth and then his cult is going to continue in popularity throughout the Ptolemaic period and later and by the time we get into the Roman period in Egypt we will see that he is a deity who is popular throughout Egypt and even into Nubia to the south when we look at evidence for that the early stage when he is being revered by by scribes in particular we see texts like this one which comes to us from the wall of a Theban tomb dating to about the time of Amenhotep the 3rd of the 18th dynasty and the text reads the Wahb priests may give offerings to your car the Wahb priests may stretch to you their arms with libations on the soil as it is done with foreign hotep with remains of the water bowl what does this mean well when a scribe is writing they have a pot of water and as part of the ritual for in hope they would make offerings of that water to the god now we can jump forward a bit to roughly the 26th dynasty where we begin to see images of Tahoe tearing and in Statuary form and by this point his iconography is set and when we look at this image of in hotep what we see here is what we are going to see is immediately recognizable as a figure of in the hotel and on the lap of the seated figure here there is a papyrus scroll rolled out and on this papyrus scroll is a phrase very similar to what we saw in that Theban tomb may the water in the cup of any scribe be offered in libation to your car Imhotep now if we go back and we think about what our early Egyptologists what down James Henry breath said said about the importance of him hotep he notes and at the present day he's writing in 1934 1935 every museum possesses a bronze statue or two of the apotheosis wise man the proverb maker physician and architect of Djoser these are these images of Imhotep which we find in museums around the world and as you look at them you will see that they do look very similar so this his iconography is quite set we also see not only bronze statues of Imhotep but also amulets in science of this figure so he has now become fully recognized as as a god and in fact here in our collection although not on display we do have a bronze figure of Imhotep as well when we look at the iconography of in hotep he shares some characteristics with some other Egyptian gods and there are things about his iconography that give us clues about him so you will notice that the figures of Imhotep have this close fitting cap that they wear on their head so there's not no hair is visible this is very similar or identical to the close fitting skullcap that the god tah where's in Imhotep s-- history we are told that he is the son of the god top so he shares this imagery with his divine father the god taw he also easily is shown wearing a long a long robe long long kilt and so the priestly garment this is making reference to perhaps his priestly background remember he has those priestly his priestly titles it also may be coincidental to note that in ancient Egyptian depictions of priests a lot of times they are shown with shaved heads and so these figures of priests here in particular this one it does also call to mind the the skullcap that the god table wears on the lap of Imhotep all of those statues of them hotep we find this rolled out papyrus scroll a symbol of love ascribe a symbol of being able to write the ability to write the ability to read something that not many ancient Egyptians had and we know from very early in sort of Egyptian art there were depictions of individuals in scribal poses so this idea that someone is a scribe that has this ability to read and write is something that's very very important and we see that with its Imhotep as far as connections to other day at we know that Todd is credited with being his father he also is closely associated with the god Thoth Thoth is of course our god of wisdom Thoth is the one who was thought to have invented hieroglyphs invented writing gave that gift to the ancient Egyptians Thoth was also a patron of scribes so there is some shared responsibilities that Imhotep and the god Thoth have I mentioned that Imhotep becomes very important in the area around Memphis so we see close connections with in hotep and the gods that are part of the men fight triad in ancient Egyptian temples and there usually was a family of gods a father God a mother God my child God and at Memphis we have taw his concert Sekhmet and the child God Meffert em sometimes we see em hotep inserted in here as one as the child got as a child of top I'm also from the Memphis area we can notice depictions of our figure of an hotep here shown standing but still recognize the bowl by his his skullcap and if you happen to read hieroglyphs his name here together with two very important men fight gods the god taw whom we mentioned and the APIs bull here who is shown so he is shown in the company of right in the middle of these two very important deities and being worshipped by this figure here now he is very closely connected to medicine and this is sort of an interesting thing because if you look at his titles that are written down on that statue base from the time when he was alive there's nothing mentioned there about him being a doctor or him being yet he is called and has been described as the first figure of a physician to stand out from the mists of antiquity so where does this connection how is it that he is so closely connected to medicine and the healing arts so much so that when the medical when Hamptons Sydney College which is now Virginia Commonwealth University built their first medical department what they used as they a design for that structure in 1845 was a sort of Egyptian eyes temple pylon which would what happened which would connect that the their structure connect their medical department with the the wisdom the healing arts of ancient Egypt which would then connect to in hotel many times when we look at descriptions of the accomplishments of an hotep and we're told he's an author we're told he wrote wisdom texts were also sometimes told that he was the author of a medical book a medical papyrus or medical treatise and this text that you're seeing here the edwin smith surgical papyrus is one that he is often given the credit for writing his name does not appear on the text anywhere this papyrus itself dates to 1700 BC so that the date of the papyrus is much later than the lifespan of Ivanhoe death but the reason why this has been suggested is that this surgical papyrus deals with medical cases involving trauma and the various ways in which these traumas were attempted to be healed by an ancient Egyptian physician and they seem to be quite logical quite practical quite medical in their attempts at healing as opposed to more magical or approaches were more religious approaches and so some had suggested well maybe because Imhotep was the architect of the Step Pyramid and he was involved he was there on the building said he would have seen all kinds of building injuries accidents stone blocks falling on people this kind of thing and so he would have been able to compose a text like this but as I said his name doesn't appear on it anywhere there's no certain connection between em hotep and this papyrus here but his his legend or his abilities his connection with the healing arts we see in Egypt on monuments there are special shrines that are dedicated to in hotel as a healer that were visited by pilgrims visited by people who wanted to be healed of various problems various medical ailments so this idea this identification of him with the medical arts is something that becomes quite ingrained in ancient Egyptian thinking when we move from oops the men fight area in the north and we head south to the area of Thebes there are two shrines in particular that I'd like to just mention as far as in hotels connection with healing one is at the site of Deir el-bahri this is the location of the mortuary temple of the great Queen female pharaoh Hatshepsut t' of dynasty 18 during the Ptolemaic period ptolemy the eighth built a shrine to the god Imhotep at this site so by that point this had largely fallen into ruin but there was a a cult or a shrine a connection between this location and that other day of five individual Amenhotep son of hapu who is also a healer was in this area and so Ptolemy had this other shrine constructed there and you can see images dating to the Ptolemaic period showing in hotep there at Deir el-bahri and he would be approached by people looking to be healed in the same way that our individual Amenhotep son of hatha would be also in the Theban area we see those two deified individuals Amenhotep and Imhotep shown together here at Karnak also from the Ptolemaic period here you have an image of the god taw and in front of taw kind of small and maybe a little bit hard to see there is a figure of an hotep and a figure of Amenhotep son of hopple so these two in the Theban area are sort of connected in their ideas their abilities to offer healing to to pilgrims there are examples of steel a votive Stila that would have been left by people either hoping to be cured or in thanks for being cured that pair these two daya fide individuals together these two healers also at the site of deir el-medina the the famous location for the artists and craftsmen who cut and decorated the tombs of the kings and the valley of the kings in that location there is a Ptolemaic temple tonic era temple constructed there and inside that temple we see also images representations of Imhotep fully defied and here behind him is an image of his mother who has shown during the the Hathor the Horned Sun disc crown so she too is given a sort of divinized divinized state and here just to remind you again another image of that the mother of them hotel so this roughly contemporary with that there are a series of three very interesting steely which are now housed in the British Museum that make special reference to Imhotep and his abilities at solving a personal problem or a medical problem with these Stila we have one dedicated by husband one by his wife and another by their their child and the texts are really interesting we see here this is the one that belongs to the husband he had a very high priestly title his name is Pasha Aaron ha and in the text here it describes how he had three daughters by his wife and he did not have a son and he prayed to Imhotep Forest son and lo and behold a son was born so we see him hotep as a someone who can assist with things of that nature with problems of that nature for the ancient Egyptians having a son would was sort of the ideal so the fact that this man had three daughters and still didn't have a son is what would what would have been for him a real crisis and so he prays to him hotep and loan to hold him hotep solves that problem and we see at the top of this Stila Imhotep and there could you see a close-up of it here included in amongst other gods and goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon important deities like Osiris and Isis and Nephthys and Horus and Anubis and there is our Imhotep our deified individual who has joined the ranks of these very important gods and goddesses here is the companion Stila to the one of passion and ha the Stila of time hoteth this is the Stila of the wife and like her husband she has shown offering or worshipping before a series of gods and goddesses Imhotep is not included in this this series but in the text she describes how she had she was married she had all these daughters with her husband she prayed to him hotep her husband made offerings her husband you know made a shrine from hotep and lo and behold a son was born to them so in hotep solves this problem we also see from later in the the Roman period the possibility that there were personal shrines inside private homes that would feature images of the God in hotep so that he would be able to help individuals with problems that they would have they wouldn't even have to visit a temple in order to have the problem solve these prayers could be offered from the confines of their their own home well the cult of M hotep cease to exist around the 4th century CE lasted about 3,000 years after his death so a tremendous amount of time tremendous number of texts that come to us from the late period into the Ptolemaic and roman period talking about this god who is revered as a healer revered as a wise man and you know has added so much to his his legend his history from what we saw on that statue base were just very few titles are listed there now we can take a look at how this sage this healer this architect is represented today in pop culture you are all probably familiar with the famous Boris Karloff mummy movie where our M hotep was an ancient Egyptian priest who had been involved in some sort of romantic encounter that he shouldn't have been and was punished was mummified then came back to life and there's there's murderous intrigue and all this kind of things so in hotep in this film and in the remake from the late 90s early 2000s Imhotep is not particularly wise not particularly kind not a healer not at all and in fact when we look at these films and try and say well what can we connect from these these images of them hotep to our things of the past basically it's a bald guys who have a book I mean that seems to be the only so as far as kitsch I I do have a problem with ancient Egyptian kitsch my house is filled with it so you could on ebay right now if you wanted to purchase a cursed Imhotep action figure that has all sorts of spinning flesh-eating scarabs there or if you wanted to go more the cute Imhotep version you can give this little stuffed stuffed doll that is our Boris Karloff Imhotep Imhotep also features in comic books there is a series of stories about involving Conan the Barbarian where there is a figure in hotep here and Conan Imhotep have to sort of work together to to to solve problems so I again not not too connected to our ancient Egyptian Imhotep also on eBay and super tempted to snap these up is this set of five fathers of Medicine handled mugs 39.99 right now they include Lister gallon Pasteur Hippocrates and Imhotep so there he is his at least his medical connection is being stressed in in this modern incarnation of him he appears some really weird places there is a comet that this comet here and I'm not even going to attempt I can pronounce ancient Egyptian names but I'm not going to attempt this but in this particular comment each region of the comment is named after an ancient Egyptian deity and there's a feature of the comet called Imhotep which is a sort of flat region I don't know that I would be very flattered to be the flat region of the comet but I mean here in Philadelphia we have a connection with him hotep with one of our charter schools there is the Imhotep Institute Charter School in the city and I am always fascinated they apparently have a fantastic sports football team maybe and so I read the paper sometimes and I see things like Imhotep trounces you know and it always makes me laugh because I'm an Egyptologist and you know maybe I'm the only person finding that funny so there you know in hotep still today has a connection with philadelphia so our our Imhotep our our wise sage our architect our incredible polymath on one hand our crazy homicidal Hollywood monster on the other hand these are the images I will sort of leave you with and I hope that I have have you come to see him more on this side than on on this side and since we are at Penn and since this has been Franklin's University I will suggest that the university may want to add a little figure of Imhotep there on the bench with Ben Franklin out on Locust walk two wise men sitting on a bench reading stuff thank you very much you

Channel: Penn Museum

Views: 49,359

Rating: 4.6465392 out of 5

Keywords: Imhotep (Deity), Architect (Profession), Penn Museum, University Of Pennsylvania Museum Of Archaeology And Anthropology (Museum), Science, History, Egypt (Country), Egyptology (Field Of Study), Imhotep, Culture, Step Pyramid, Saqqara, Dr. Jennifer Wegner, Museum (Building Function), Tourist Destination

Id: 2cW2t1NOnlI

Length: 55min 40sec (3340 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/alllie]

The historical figure Imhotep designed the remarkable Step Pyramid complex at Saqqara built during the reign of King Djoser (circa 2687–2668 BCE). After his death, Imhotep was regarded as a great sage and was later deified one of the few human beings to join the Egyptian pantheon. As a god, Imhotep was regarded as a patron of healers. This talk by Dr. Jennifer Wegner, Associate Curator, Egyptian Section, examines his rise from royal architect to divine being, concluding with an exploration of his appearance in pop culture today.

[u/AYNRAND420]

Alllie, I need for you to know that your constant service to r/lectures and r/ldq is noticed and appreciated