atheth his
property to his children before he setteth out, being afraid that he
will be killed either by wild beasts of the desert or by the nomads
therein. When he is in Egypt, what then? No sooner hath he arrived at
home than he is sent off on another mission. As for the dyer, his
fingers stink like rotten fish, and his clothes are absolutely horrors.
The shoemaker is a miserable wretch. He is always asking for work, and
his health is that of a dying fish. The washerman is neighbour to the
crocodile. His food is mixed up with his clothes, and every member of
him is unclean. The catcher of water-fowl, even though he dive in the
Nile, may catch nothing. The trade of the fisherman is the worst of all.
He is in blind terror of the crocodile, and falleth among crocodiles."
The text continues with a few further remarks on the honourable
character of the profession of the scribe, and ends with a series of
Precepts of the same character as those found in the works of Ptah-hetep
and the scribe Ani, from which extracts have already been given.

IX. MEDICAL PAPYRI.--The Egyptians possessed a good practical knowledge
of the anatomy of certain parts of the human body, but there is no
evidence that they practised dissection before the arrival of the Greeks
in Egypt. The medical papyri that have come down to us contain a large
number of short, rough-and-ready descriptions of certain diseases, and
prescriptions of very great interest. The most important medical papyrus
known is that which was bought at Luxor by the late Professor Ebers in
1872-3, and which is now preserved in Leipzig. This papyrus is about 65
feet long, and the text is written in the hieratic character. It was
written in the ninth year of the reign of a king who is not yet
satisfactorily identified, but who probably lived before the period of
the rule of the eighteenth dynasty, perhaps about 1800 B.C. A short
papyrus in the British Museum contains extracts from it, and other
papyri with somewhat similar contents are preserved in the Museums of
Paris, Leyden, Berlin, and California.

X. MAGICAL PAPYRI.--The widespread use of magic in Egypt in all ages
suggests that the magical literature of Egypt must have been very
large. Much of it was incorporated at a very early period into the
Religious Literature of the country, and was used for legitimate
purposes, in fact for the working of what we call "white magic." The
Egyptian saw no wrong in the working of magic, and it