Brooklyn Papyrus

The Brooklyn Papyrus (47.218.48 and 47.218.85, also known as the Brooklyn Medical Papyrus) is a medical papyrus dating from ancient Egypt and is one of the oldest preserved writings about medicine and ophiology. The manuscript is dated to around 450 BC and is today kept at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

The Brooklyn Papyrus consists of a scroll of papyrus divided into two parts with some parts missing, its total length is estimated to 175 × 27 cm. The text is on the recto side. The different numbers refer to the upper part (-48, 66,5 × 27,5 cm) and the lower part (-85, 66,5 × 27,5 cm) of the scroll.

The manuscript is a collection, the first part systematically describing a number of different snakes and the second part describing different treatments for snakebites. The manuscript also contains treatments of scorpion bites and spider bites.

The papyrus scroll is dated in between 660 and 330 BC around the Thirtieth Dynasty of Egypt. The text however is written in a style common during the Middle Kingdom which could suggest its origin might be from the Thirteenth dynasty of Egypt.

The text proceeds page by page, alternating between the two parts of the papyrus. Thus each complete page starts with 47.218.48 and finishes with 47.218.85 (the accession numbers given by the Brooklyn Museum). The title and start of the work are missing, and the extant part of the first section commences at line 15 of the lower part (designated page 1) and continues to page 2 of both upper and lower parts, terminating at line 16 of the latter. The first section comprises a systematic description of snakes and their bites. The last line states that there have been descriptions of 38 snakes and their bites, of which the first 13 are lost.

The second section starts on line 17, page 2 of the lowers part (47.218.85), and continues almost complete up to the fifth pair of pages. Only the right-hand halves of the sixth pair of pages remain. The second section commences at paragraph 39 with an important introduction:

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