about the year 1552 B.C., which, according to the conventional scriptural chronology, would correspond with about the 21st year of the life of Moses. If this estimation is approximately correct it follows that the prescriptions of the papyrus are considerably older than those given in the book of Exodus for the holy anointing oil and for incense, which in old works are sometimes quoted as the earliest records of "the art of the apothecary."
The papyrus begins by declaring that the writer had brought help from the King of Eternity from Heliopolis; from the Goddess Mother to Sais, she who alone could ensure protection. Speech had been given him to tell how all pains and all mortal sicknesses might be driven away. Here were chapters which would teach how to conjure away the diseases "from this my head, from this my neck, from this my arm, from this my flesh, from these my limbs. For Ra pities the sick; his teacher is Thuti" (Thoth or Hermes) "who has given him words to make this book and to save instructions to scholars and to physicians who will follow them, so that what is dark shall be unriddled. For he whom the God loveth, he maketh alive; I am one who loveth the God, and he maketh me alive."
Here are the words to speak when preparing the remedies for all parts of the body: "As it shall be a thousand times. This is the book of the healing of all sicknesses. That Isis may make free, make free. May Isis heal me as she healed Horus of all pains which his brother Set had done to him who killed his father Osiris. Oh, Isis, thou great magician, heal me and save me from all wicked, frightful, and red things, from demoniac and deadly diseases and illnesses of every kind. Oh, Ra. Oh, Osiris."
