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| Pharaonic Times and MentalHealth |
Pharaonic Times and MentalHealth
The concept of mental illness in Pharaonic Egypt was monistic and, in a mystical culture, it was attributed to bodily etiology and treated physically and psychotherapeutically (magicoreligious). The medical papyri from which our knowledge of ancient Egyptian medicine is drawn are the Kahun Papyrus (1825 BCE, rather incomplete and fragmentary, dealing with the morbid states attributed to the displacement of the uterus, discovered by Flinders Petrie in 1889), Ebers’ Papyrus (1552 BCE, the world’s oldest preserved medical document, published by Georg Ebers in 1875 and translated by Ebbell in 1937), Edwin Smith Papyrus (written about 1700 BCE, although based on texts written about 2640 BC, dealingmainly with surgery), Hearst Papyrus (similar to that of Ebers),BerlinMedical Papyrus (1350 BCE, dealing with prescriptions in an unsystematic arrangement) and the London Medical Papyrus (1350 BCE, containing mainly incantations against a variety of diseases and few prescriptions).
The role of the physician, magician and priest were not separated in Pharaonic times, suggesting there was no specialization in mental disorders, although psychotic and mental symptoms are mentioned in many clinical observations, mainly in the “treatise of the heart” . In Ebbell’s translation of Ebers’ papyrus, the words heart and mind occur in 14 prescriptions, but it must be added that while Ebbell translates “ib” as mind and “he, tj” as heart, Grapow translates both by heart, so it seems that the heart and the mind meant the same thing in Ancient Egypt .
Depression, dementia, psychomotor retardation, negativism and subacute delirious states, and thought disorders similar to schizophrenia were described in detail in the treatise of the heart in Eber’s papyrus. Within those categories, ancient Egyptians listed disturbances of thinking, emotions, intellect and behavior similar to formal thought disorder, poverty of thinking, retardation and excitement, forgetfulness, etc. For ancient Egyptians those were subsumed under ailments of the heart.
