A collaboration between Brown University’s Department of Egyptology and Assyriology (USA), the Institute of the History of Pharmacy and Medicine (Germany), Naturalis Biodiversity Center (Netherlands), and Fytagoras explored chemical profiling to support philological analysis of ancient Egyptian herbal medicine. Focusing on the Ebers Papyrus (c. 1530 BCE), we examined therapeutic “recipes” to understand processing practices and sickness categories. After summarizing “diseases” setet and seryt, selected recipes were recreated and analysed using NMR spectroscopy, supported by LC-MS and GC-MS by Fytagoras. The goal was to test whether effective compounds survived ancient preparation methods. These findings provided new insights into ancient Egyptian medical knowledge and contributed to ongoing Egyptological debates.
The results were published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacoloy (download the paper at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378874125011900?dgcid=coauthor)
We conclude that:
- Recreating and profiling recipes can support historical analyses.
- Pharmaceutical technologies were key for desired effects of ancient ingredients.
- The compositum analysed showed synergetic effects of the ingredients.
