Amber Jacob

The Papyrus Carlsberg Collection, housed at the University of Copenhagen, contains the world’s largest collection of ancient Egyptian medical texts from the Graeco-Roman era. Although no complete manuscripts have been preserved, the collection includes remnants of more than seven medical anthologies and two copies of an herbal written in the Demotic script. All date roughly from the 1st-2nd centuries CE and are unique in that they have a known archaeological and social context, originating from an institutional temple library discovered in the ancient city of Tebtunis. From the same site, some 14 or so contemporary Greek medical papyri have been found, at least some of which can be securely placed to the same temple library find. This shared context of Egyptian and Greek medical literature will undoubtedly bear important implications for cross-cultural studies and the history of medicine.
The bulk of the highly fragmentary Carlsberg Demotic medical manuscripts were sold on the antiquities market and have ended up in various collections around the world, along with other Demotic papyri and ostraca broadly defined as ‘medical.’ In total, some seventy-five papyri and ostraca have been noted, with further material undoubtedly yet to be identified in the unsorted stock of such collections. However, despite this sizeable sum of Demotic medical material, the publication record is regrettably scant. Hence, the majority of this significant corpus remains untranslated, unpublished, and largely inaccessible. The few publications that do exist are too sparse and isolated to afford a significant platform for broader comparison, rendering the project of assessing questions of the internal, diachronic development of Egyptian medicine, the level of cross-cultural interaction between Egyptian and Greek medicine, and the influence of Egyptian medicine on the Western scientific tradition, problematic at best.
The project of editing the Demotic medical texts in the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection is currently being undertaken by the author. The purpose of this article is to provide a preliminary report on the project and to give a brief overview of the contents of these important manuscripts.

This paper argues, based on a re-examination of passages in the Meno, Laws, Phaedo, Republic, Gorgias and Cratylus, that Plato was acquainted with an “Orphic” anthropogony relating the origin of the human race to a Titanic dismemberment of Dionysus. In particular, I argue that Platonic passages rejected as evidence by Edmonds and other scholars, once properly contextualized within the Platonic corpus, do support the existence of such a myth. In conclusion, I briefly explore broader implications for Plato’s reception of contemporary “Orphism” (or “Orphisms”).

Cet article suggère, d’après un nouvel examen de passages tirés du Ménon, des Lois, de la République, du Gorgias et du Cratyle, que Platon était familier avec une anthropogonie « orphique » qui expliquait l’origine de la race humaine par le démembrement de Dionysos. En particulier, nous défendons l’idée que les passages de Platon dont le témoignage a été rejeté par Edmonds et d’autres érudits, une fois correctement mis en contexte dans le corpus platonicien, supportent l’existence d’un tel mythe. En conclusion, nous explorons brièvement quelques incidences plus larges sur la réception de l’« orphisme » (ou des « orphismes ») contemporain chez Platon.