Who is Imhotep, everyone will say: this is a beautiful, terrible and bald immortal Egyptian sorcerer who draws vitality from people. Who is more educated, will clarify that "The Mummy" is a remake of the film of the same name, where Imhotep was played by the "king of horrors" Boris Karloff. This is perhaps the most ironic, insignificant and ridiculous honor that this great man has received over the millennia. Genuine Imhotep, if anything, is similar to his cinematic parody, so only his shaved head. His role in our world is much greater: if the civilization of our planet can find one person who has the right to be called its founder, this is he, Imhotep.
Many peoples had myths about cultural heroes (founders of their civilizations) and about gods and demigods who gave people knowledge. It is interesting that before all these myths, ancient and recent - about Prometheus, who stole fire; about Odin, who hanged himself on the World Tree to get runes; about the blacksmith Ilmarinen and about Hiawatha - there was a completely real person who gave the name to the first of the creation myths. Imhotep, the vizier and main builder of Pharaoh Djoser (and, apparently, his brother or nephew), went the other way: from a common man to a legendary sage, from a sage to a demigod, from a demigod to a god, and his cult lived and flourished in Egypt in general complexity of about three millennia - five hundred years more than Buddhism, a thousand years more than Christianity and one and a half thousand more than Islam.
We don't know much about Imhotep reliably. The Egyptians of the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BC), although they had already created a written language, almost did not create texts. But there are two lifetime inscriptions about Imhotep: one on the pedestal of the statue of Pharaoh Djoser (Cairo Museum - JE 49889), where all his titles are listed, and the other - graffiti on the wall of the unfinished pyramid of the heir to Djoser Sekhemhet. This is more than enough to be sure that Imhotep is not a myth, but a real person, that he really lived around 2650–2600 BC. and that already during his lifetime he was so great that his name was carved on the statues of the king and ordinary people wrote on the walls - none of the other ancient Egyptians of his era received such honor and glory.
Imhotep, bronze statuette from the time of the Ptolemies
Jimmy dunn
Here it is necessary to clarify at once: such words as "vizier" and "pharaoh" are younger than Imhotep by several millennia. "Pharaoh" ("per-o" - "great house") literally means "government" and was applied to the Egyptian monarch in the New Kingdom (from about 1000 BC). In the ancient kingdom of the king, those around him could call "bear-biti" (the king of Upper and Lower Egypt), "nebti" (Favorite of two goddesses), "Golden Mountain", "Son of Ra", and Djoser was more often called Necherihet - the Divine body. The term "pharaoh" stuck to three millennia of Egyptian history thanks to the Greek historian Herodotus, who introduced this Hellenized term into his multivolume History. The word "Egypt" is also Greek ("Ayguptos" - this is how the Greeks rendered in their language the name of the city of Hikupta, "the house of the god Ptah", better known to us again by the Greek name Memphis). The Egyptians called their country Kemt - "black land", after the color of the strip of fertile soil along the Nile. The supreme assistant “nebti” for all kinds of occupations was called “chati” in Egypt. "Vizier" is a term from the Arabic "vazir" ("helper"), although in Persian there is a similar word "wasira" - "judge", "peacemaker". In terms of Egyptology, there is a lot of thousand-year-old confusion, although the last decryption unexpectedly comes to Imhotep, whose name stands for "I-m-htep" - "I brought you peace." This name describes Imhotep in the best possible way, who entered our memory not by victories over enemies, but by the most peaceful deeds that can be imagined - as the world's first architect, physician and mathematician."Vizier" is a term from the Arabic "vazir" ("helper"), although in Persian there is a similar word "wasira" - "judge", "peacemaker". In terms of Egyptology, there is a lot of thousand-year-old confusion, although the last decryption unexpectedly comes to Imhotep, whose name stands for "I-m-htep" - "I brought you peace." This name describes Imhotep in the best possible way, who entered our memory not by victories over enemies, but by the most peaceful deeds that can be imagined - as the world's first architect, physician and mathematician."Vizier" is a term from the Arabic "vazir" ("helper"), although in Persian there is a similar word "wasira" - "judge", "peacemaker". In terms of Egyptology, there is a lot of thousand-year-old confusion, although the last decryption unexpectedly comes to Imhotep, whose name stands for "I-m-htep" - "I brought you peace." This name describes Imhotep in the best possible way, who entered our memory not by victories over enemies, but by the most peaceful deeds that can be imagined - as the world's first architect, physician and mathematician.who entered our memory not by victories over enemies, but by the most peaceful deeds that can be imagined - as the world's first architect, physician and mathematician.who entered our memory not by victories over enemies, but by the most peaceful deeds that can be imagined - as the world's first architect, physician and mathematician.
The main achievement of Imhotep is still worth it - this is the famous Step Pyramid of Djoser. Imhotep did not invent writing and counting - these arts had already appeared several hundred years before him. Imhotep did not invent the construction of houses and construction of stone - and this was already before him, the kings of previous generations were buried in stone rectangular buildings (mastabs). But it was Imhotep who began to erect buildings not in breadth, but upward. The intellectual breakthrough he made was to put one building on the roof of another.
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Imagine the mindset of Imhotep's contemporary: what is the idea of a building? A building is a foundation, on it walls with doors and windows on the walls, a roof. And that's all. And suddenly someone says: "We will put a building on a building!" What? Everyone knows that the roof of a building is its absolute top, it has not changed ten thousand years from the day the first buildings were invented (well, five thousand years exactly, archaeologists found the first reliably known houses in biblical Jericho, they were built about 8350 years before AD, and they are all one-story). And Imhotep did it not once, but six times. Djoser's pyramid - six mastabas, standing one on top of the other. You can imagine how fantastic this building was for its time, and the only one of its kind.
Why the Egyptians built the pyramids, we still do not know for certain. There are many versions. According to one, the climate of Egypt required farmers to work on the land only two out of three seasons, the rest of the time they could idle, and the proto-Egyptians spent this time on raids, robberies and other antisocial activities. The founders of the unified state called the community members to construction sites every year to distract them from the wars (for the account of this version, see: Cottrell, Leonard. The mountains of Pharaoh. New York, Rinehart, 1956). According to the other, the pyramids were an important part of the cult of the king as the "earthly sun", symbolizing either the rays of the sun falling from the sky, or the primitive heap of clay, from which the god Ptah created the world (the top stone of the pyramid (pyramidion) was called in Egyptian the same like the "primeval heap" - "benben";the pyramidion was covered with gold or electro (a natural alloy of gold and silver) or contained images of the sun; hence our conclusions about the symbolism of the pyramids. - Yu. A.). The most interesting version is that the pyramids were "machines of immortality." In the pyramids of the next generation (these are the three famous "great pyramids" of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaur), adits leading from the burial chambers of the kings were discovered, which looked up into the sky at an angle to the point where the celestial pole is located. In our time, the North Star is located near the pole, but since the earth's axis is precessing, five thousand years ago there was a void at this place, where the naked eye could not distinguish a single star. As far as can be judged, the Egyptians quite reasonably concluded that in the starry void there is a hole from the celestial axis, that is, the passage from the world of people to the world of the gods. And then the divine body of King Ba remains on earth (in fact, the Egyptian inscriptions call the pyramids - "Ba"), the divine spirit King Ka goes into the sky, and together they create a channel of immortality, through which either the king personally or all the inhabitants Kemt will enter the afterlife (Wilkinson, Toby. Before the Pyramids. In: Egypt at its Origins. Proceedings of the International Conference "Origin of the State. Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt", Krakow, 28th August - 1st September, 2002). Proceedings of the International Conference “Origin of the State. Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt ", Krakow, 28th August - 1st September, 2002). Proceedings of the International Conference “Origin of the State. Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt ", Krakow, 28th August - 1st September, 2002).
But this was far from Imhotep's only breakthrough. The roof can be supported by posts made of logs or bundles of reed. So? Could there be stone logs? Nonsense? Not for Imhotep. For the first time in the world, columns appear in the Step Pyramid complex, externally shaped like bundles of reeds. Imhotep was the first to jump from one material to another. To prevent the upper floors from crushing the lower ones with their colossal weight, you need to build it not from raw bricks. Imhotep creates a technique for cutting limestone and delivering it to the construction site. To prevent the pyramid from falling, you need to build it so that its own weight stabilizes it. And this is no longer the simplest engineering and mathematical solution.
But the construction site is also a place where injuries, infections and diseases constantly occur. In 1862, Egyptologist Edwin Smith bought papyrus from Egypt. Decoding in the 1920s showed that this is the oldest doctor's reference book, moreover, compiled according to the same system as modern reference books: a classifier of injuries and diseases "from head down", description and diagnostic procedures, treatment methods and forecasts in three categories: " I will cure this illness”,“I will try to cure this illness”and“I will not cure this illness”. The author of this text is named Imhotep. Although the text of the Smith papyrus dates from the Middle Kingdom period, around 1600 BC, it is believed that the protographer of this text really belongs to Imhotep. And this means that it was Imhotep who created modern rational and organized medical knowledge.
Unsurprisingly, Imhotep's status grew over time. During his lifetime, Imhotep was honored as the first sage. In subsequent centuries, he was first considered the father of wisdom, in the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC) he became a demigod, the son of the creator of the universe, Ptah. Apparently, at the same time the canon of the image of Imhotep was formed: he does not stand, like other Egyptian deities, demonstrating power and strength, but calmly sits with a scroll (drawing?) On his knees, on his shaved head a bright blue dense cap, like his heavenly father Ptah. In some of the images, however, we see a more realistic image: the cap turns out to be a blue bandana. An absolutely necessary thing for someone who runs day and night under the scorching sun on a construction site.
In the middle to the end of the 1st millennium BC. Egypt became part of the Hellenistic ecumene, and Imhotep was identified with the Egyptian god of wisdom Thoth and the Greek god of medicine Asclepius. From the era of the Ptolemies, the "stele of Hunger" has reached us, which describes how Imhotep saved Egypt from seven hungry years. There are multiple parallels in this story with the story of Joseph the Beautiful; no, Imhotep was not the biblical Joseph, just descendants attributed to him all the exploits of the past at once. The cult of Imhotep is known up to the 4th century, in fact, before the Christian era.
It is interesting that from the era of Imhotep, three royal symbols begin to appear on the images: ankh - the knot of Life, jed - the column of Order and uas - the rod of Power. What they mean is anyone's guess. Different Egyptologists explained their appearance in different ways: these are three parts of the body of the dismembered Osiris, and three bones of the sacrificial bull, and attributes of the gods Isis, Set and Osiris. But it is possible that the original meaning of these symbols is simpler and more practical. Uas is a hammer used to drive in pegs at a construction site, and a measuring pole. Jed is a plumb line and at the same time a simple ruler with ten divisions. And ankh is a rope bay. You can't do without all three things on a construction site. Perhaps the architect's tools acquired divine status precisely from the construction of the Step Pyramid.
Imhotep is the first architect, the first physician and the first mathematician in the world, but his real achievement and breakthrough, perhaps, is much more than a step towards creating the foundations of several sciences and arts at once. Imhotep boldly, bravely and arrogantly swung at the solution of the problem, over which, in fact, the entire human civilization is struggling - to live in spite of everything. The sun will shine forever, the darkness will not fall, and the human race will not perish - this is the covenant that we got from the Egyptians and Imhotep. This is the goal to achieve which Imhotep threw his intellect, labor and strength. His achievements may seem small to us - but only because we live in an era, the foundations of which were created by his intellectual breakthroughs. That is why Imhotep can be considered the founder of our civilization. Did he deserve the veneration of descendants and his divine status? Deserved. But oblivionwhich our time has covered it, no.
Yuri Ammosov