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Pharaoh Djoser’s visir, architect, mathemetician, doctor, cultured, he
reached such a fame that two thousand years after his death he was deified,
becoming the protector of medecine. To him goes the invention of the pyramid in
levels in Saqqara for his pharaoh. The tradition attributes to him some books of
a great wisdom. From the middle reign the
sribes celebrated him as a great
cultured man. But Imotheo’s great glory reached its height in the saitica epoch,
when he was deified also as a “healer god”. Manetone states about this that “for
his medical knowledge, he is considered equal to Asclepio (Greek god of medecine)
by the Egyptians”. Deified, Imhotep was also hnored with a heveanly genealogy. He was considered Efesto’s and a mortal woman named Khrotionakh’s son, and the Greek called him Imuthes. His cult was spread in all Egypt, from the file island, where there was a chapel of his, to Karnak, Deir el – Bahari, Deir el-Medina, and in lower Egypt in Saqqara. Exactly in Saqqara there was a chapel called Asklepleion by the Greek that was more or less a hospital and gave hospitality to the sick who came even from every far away. Imhotep’s tomb, was certainly near Asklepleion. British excavations (1965) have brought to light in Saqqara, in the necropolis of the III dynasty, an Ibeion, an underground cemetary of mummified ibis connected with the hellenic Asklepleion. These constructions built among the mastabe, were maybe near Imothep’s tomb and it’s not excluded that further excavations may give us the eternal home of the man who has greatly given honor to ancient Egypt. |
