"Father of Medicine"
Posted: 28 Nov 2017 11:27
Text by 'Father of Medicine' Found in Remote Egyptian Monastery
The manuscript was unearthed by the monastery's monks who were conducting restorations in the centuries-old
library.
There's perhaps no doctor in history more famous than Hippocrates. Many medical students today still swear the
ancient doctor's oath to adhere to ethical medical principles. While the details of his life are murky (it's even
debated whether he wrote the oath or some of the other manuscripts that bear his name), Hippocrates is widely
regarded as the 'Father of Western medicine."
Archaeologists now believe they may have found on of the ancient doctor's medical recipes preserved by centuries-
past scholars during the renovation of the world's oldest running library.
While conducting restorations on the St. Catherine Monastery in South Sinai, a remote region on a peninsula in
Egypt, monks claim to have found a 6th century recipe formulated by the doctor. The discovery was announced
by officials from both the Egyptian and Greek governments, who worked with researchers from Greece.
The manuscript's contains a medical recipe that the researchers attribute to Hippocrates's work during the 5th and
4th century BC. The manuscript also contains three recipes with pictures of herbs that were created by an
anonymous scribe.
The manuscript was one of the library's notable "Sinai Palimpsests".
The Palimpsests were made of streched leather that would have been laborious and expensive to produce at the time.
As a result, the original content of many Palimpsests were erased or written over to allow for a new manuscript to
be written.
In the case of the recently found Hippocratic medicinal recipe, a second layer of Bible text known as the
"Sinaitic manuscript." was written over the initial copy. EMEL..Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, uses spectral
imaging to read palimpsests, the technique is able to reveal the text hidden beneath the secound layer in the
manuscript, thus revealing what can't be seen with the naked eye.
Speaking with Egyptian newspaper Asharq-Al-Aswat, Michael Phelps, a researcher at EMEL, stated, "The manuscript,
which contains three medical texts, will be enlisted among the oldest and the most important manuscripts in the
world."
Some 130 known palimpsests sit in St Carnerine's Monastery, and the content of the erased writing what lies below
the visible text is largely unknown for many of the documents.
The region, which sits in a relatively remote part of the desert, was first used in the 3rd or 4th centuries by hermits
and religious scholars.
Since the walls and churc surrounding the historic location were constructed in the 6th century, the monastery has been inhabited by monks ever since. A small number of monks live and work in the monastery today where they
observe practices unchanged for the past centuries.
The library itself contains an estimated 3,300 manuscripts that are primary written in Greek; however, texts in
Aramaic, Georgian, Arabic, and Latin have been recovered as well.
By Sarah Gibbens-Narional geographic
The manuscript was unearthed by the monastery's monks who were conducting restorations in the centuries-old
library.
There's perhaps no doctor in history more famous than Hippocrates. Many medical students today still swear the
ancient doctor's oath to adhere to ethical medical principles. While the details of his life are murky (it's even
debated whether he wrote the oath or some of the other manuscripts that bear his name), Hippocrates is widely
regarded as the 'Father of Western medicine."
Archaeologists now believe they may have found on of the ancient doctor's medical recipes preserved by centuries-
past scholars during the renovation of the world's oldest running library.
While conducting restorations on the St. Catherine Monastery in South Sinai, a remote region on a peninsula in
Egypt, monks claim to have found a 6th century recipe formulated by the doctor. The discovery was announced
by officials from both the Egyptian and Greek governments, who worked with researchers from Greece.
The manuscript's contains a medical recipe that the researchers attribute to Hippocrates's work during the 5th and
4th century BC. The manuscript also contains three recipes with pictures of herbs that were created by an
anonymous scribe.
The manuscript was one of the library's notable "Sinai Palimpsests".
The Palimpsests were made of streched leather that would have been laborious and expensive to produce at the time.
As a result, the original content of many Palimpsests were erased or written over to allow for a new manuscript to
be written.
In the case of the recently found Hippocratic medicinal recipe, a second layer of Bible text known as the
"Sinaitic manuscript." was written over the initial copy. EMEL..Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, uses spectral
imaging to read palimpsests, the technique is able to reveal the text hidden beneath the secound layer in the
manuscript, thus revealing what can't be seen with the naked eye.
Speaking with Egyptian newspaper Asharq-Al-Aswat, Michael Phelps, a researcher at EMEL, stated, "The manuscript,
which contains three medical texts, will be enlisted among the oldest and the most important manuscripts in the
world."
Some 130 known palimpsests sit in St Carnerine's Monastery, and the content of the erased writing what lies below
the visible text is largely unknown for many of the documents.
The region, which sits in a relatively remote part of the desert, was first used in the 3rd or 4th centuries by hermits
and religious scholars.
Since the walls and churc surrounding the historic location were constructed in the 6th century, the monastery has been inhabited by monks ever since. A small number of monks live and work in the monastery today where they
observe practices unchanged for the past centuries.
The library itself contains an estimated 3,300 manuscripts that are primary written in Greek; however, texts in
Aramaic, Georgian, Arabic, and Latin have been recovered as well.
By Sarah Gibbens-Narional geographic