Imhotep and the Mysteries of Egyptian Healing
And what is healing or restoration of health? This would be the first question to ask. When we feel pain, the immediate desire is to get rid of it quickly. But what happens when the pain is not physical, but mental or emotional, what happens when disappointments have wounded our heart again and again, and it is so full of scars that there is barely room for one more wound? And how to correct all the physical and emotional imbalances that have led us to this painful present?
Recovering a state of health has become a social myth. We find it in many magazines and in advertisements for consumer products, beauty, fitness, not to mention vaccines, surgeries, prostheses, etc. In fact, it is a myth, because what we call “health” is not something static: life is something constantly evolving. It is an evolutionary process that, for some people ends in death, while for others it never ends, but goes beyond death. In any case it is a “dynamic” equilibrium, an equilibrium at a given moment. But this dynamic balance has to be a state of harmony between the different mental and physical factors that constitute the human being; unfortunately these factors are almost always at war.
And here comes Egyptian medicine, its particular definition of health and the legend of its founder, Imhotep. The very name of this extraordinary man is a moral key for the practice of medicine and for becoming a true doctor, “Imhotep”, that is, “He who brings peace or harmony.”
Many books and documents mention Imhotep, but despite this there is no certain information about him. Shortly after his death, about a hundred years later, he was considered a demigod, and in the time of the Ptolemies he was elevated to the status of a god with full rights. He was considered the son of the god Ptah, even replacing the role of Nefertum in the Memphis triad.
Imhotep in Madrid
Although there were many places dedicated to Imhotep in Egypt, for the people of Madrid it is an honor to have an Egyptian temple in which there are certain parts dedicated to Imhotep, I am referring to the temple of Debod, a donation from the Egyptian Government to Spain, it was moved from its original location in Egypt to the West Park in Madrid.
The main places of worship were in Deir-el-Bahari, in Deir-el-Medineh, Medinet Habou, Qasr el-Agouz, the temple of Dakkah, the temple of Kalabsha and in some rooms of the temple of Karnak, where some chapels are dedicated to both Imhotep and Amenhotep son of Hapu. There are also vestiges of practices of this cult: incubation, oracles and consultations with medical priests.
In the temple of Debod in Madrid, in the so-called Adijalamani chapel, there are representations of the god Horus purifying the temple by sprinkling lustral water and closely followed by the deified Imhotep. This representation corresponds to the daily purification of the divine cult: the priest poured pure water four times with the libation cup in the naos, then continued the purification by adding five grains of natron of Nejeb and performed the anointing with the sacred oils, to finally perform a sprinkling with the water of life, whose force-energy arose mythically from the caverns of Querert, in the first waterfall, in the secret caverns of the sacred island of Bigeh.
For thousands of years, Egyptians made pilgrimages to the cult sites associated with Imhotep, in search of health and the purifying healing waters. Maybe, who knows, we should take advantage of this temple in Madrid to get closer to receive, even if only with our imagination, a little of that healthy energy that we need so much. Faith moves mountains.
Imhotep at Karnak
One of the most mysterious places dedicated to Imhotep and his strange soul brother, Amenhotep, of whom more later, is a special chapel located in the Karnak complex. I first learned about it after meeting the late Dr. Khalil Messiha, a Coptic Egyptian physician and Egyptologist, whose family came from Luxor.
He told me how as a child he went to visit with his father the strange chapel dedicated to the god Ptah and his wife the lion goddess Sekhmet and her son Nefertum-Imhotep. When he entered with his father in the enclosure of the lion goddess, the latter brought a newspaper in his hand close to his face, reflecting on the statue the sunlight that entered through an opening in the roof. The statue then shook, unleashing a strong wind inside the chapel, which forced them to leave it, while the janitor of the place laughed saying that “the lioness wants to play with you”.
Many other stories are told of the place and of the whole area of the temple complexes of Luxor and Karnak, which at the beginning of the last century were freely accessible. It was a place where there were even houses with people living among the ruins. The inhabitants told stories of strange noises, apparitions and disappearances of objects, which they attributed to the “gins”, spirits of nature, and to the “khirasa-el-firaon”, the guardian genies of the place and of the pharaoh.
While they were telling me this, just in front of the Luxor temple, in a coffee-shop, the owner of the place added that long before there was a house that communicated through a subterranean corridor with the remains of the temple of Luxor and that there lived a “saint” to whom people came from all over to ask him for cures. The crowd would gather at the door of his house, located in what are now the grounds of the Luxor temple, waiting for the sage to appear, who would then cure people, sometimes simply by blessing them, sometimes with words spoken in the ear and sometimes by giving them a piece of paper with some written words that the petitioner had to take to the bedside of the lying sick person.
Next to this chapel of Ptah in Karnak there are strong indications of the existence of an attached sanatorium. This temple has not been thoroughly investigated, and its study has not been without problems from the beginning, for strange reasons: in 1900, when archaeologist George Legrain began to investigate the temple, Egyptian workers were reluctant to undertake the excavation. They were afraid of the place, where seven little children were said to have been swallowed in a cave, leading to the place being known as the “children’s grave.”
They believed it to be the lair of a monster or ogress that had devoured them, since their bodies were never recovered. Continuing to dig meant attacking the ogress in its lair. He was said to be guarded north of the temple by a barrier of black men who protected him from anyone who approached. Precisely in that place, Legrain discovered a statue of Djehuty (Thoth) in black granite. According to archaeologist Legrain:
“At Karnak, trust was finally restored after the statue of Thoth was sent to Cairo. As far as the workers believed, the discovery of the black statue of Thoth had taken the guardian genius of the temple of Ptah prisoner and, even more,as I had copied and translated some of the hieroglyphs engraved there, I had become the owner of the magical formulas, which would force the devourer of children to surrender.”
There is probably a confusion of traditions, since the seven trapped children possibly refer to the 7 pathakois mentioned by Herodotus as the sons of Ptah, who were represented as small dwarf children, in fact small statues have appeared in the area mistaken for images of the god Bes, which actually correspond to these “pathakois” or “kabiris”. On the other hand, the goddess Sekhmet was also known as “the devourer”, hence the mixture of all these ideas gave rise to the legends related to this temple.
This temple is adjacent to Montu’s temple, it has seven gateways, in the first one there is on each side a prayer addressed to Imhotep (right pillar) of which we will talk later, and another prayer to Amenhotep (left pillar). Inside the temple, on the north wall, that is, to the left of the chamber, Ptolemy IV is represented offering a small statue in the shape of a sphinx and carrying ointments for Ptah, who is standing receiving the offering, followed behind by Hathor, Imhotep and Amenhotep.
Imhotep and Amenhotep the son of Hapu
Also on the back wall, outside the temple, there are representations of Ptah and Hathor, followed by Imhotep and Amenhotep. Imhotep appears with a short skirt and a breastplate and carrying the Uas scepter, while Amenhotep wears long robes and carries a papyrus roll and the scribe’s palette.
A prayer in the chapel reads:
The priests physicians pray for you to the god, your brother the first of all, the well loved by you, Amenhotep Son of Hapu, He dwells with you, He never forsakes you, so that your bodies form one and your souls receive the things you love…..
In another bas-relief found towards the north side of Karnak, Amenhotep and Imhotep appear on either side of an offering table. Although the hieroglyphs are very destroyed, you can read the following phrase written next to Imhotep and addressed to Amenhotep:
Who was this mysterious Amenhotep, what does he have to do with Imhotep, why were they both considered men and at the same time gods and both as well related to healing?
To be continue
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