Search for the First Intellectual

For three fruitful decades Archaeologist Walter Emery of the University of London has been exploring the inexhaustible sands of Egypt. Much of his work was done near the great Step Pyramid at Saqqara, 15 miles from Cairo, where he excavated nine mastabas (tombs capping burial shafts) of the earliest Pharaohs. This season he picked a low-lying stretch of desert north of the pyramid, where the soil was colored by pottery fragments. Somehow, the archaeologists who have worked over the area year after year had all missed the promising spot.

Father of Medicine. Playing his educated hunch, Professor Emery dug into the desert and discovered another buried mastaba. When he uncovered its southern burial shaft, he found it filled with thousands of mummified ibises. The bodies of the long-legged birds were wrapped in cloth, stuffed into pottery jars, and piled up like bricks. Digging deeper in the ground, Emery found an amazing network of ancient tunnels, most of them piled to their roofs with ibis mummies. Since the ibis was an Egyptian symbol of wisdom, they indicated to Emery that somewhere near by had stood the long-lost shrine of Imhotep, the Egyptian father of medicine, who was probably the first intellectual to impress his name on history.

The Step Pyramid itself is a monument to Imhotep. It was built as the tomb of Pharaoh Zoser, who reigned about 2980 B.C., but Imhotep was its architect. And because it is the oldest stone pyramid, the Egyptians have credited Imhotep with inventing the art of building with cut stone. He was also Zoser's prime minister, a magician, sage, proverb maker, and patron of the scribes who ran the Egyptian bureaucracy. Century by century through Egypt's long history his reputation grew. During the Ptolemaic dynasty (323-30 B.C.), when Greeks ruled Egypt, he was identified with Asclepius, their mythical source of the healing arts; sick people limped to his shrines by the thousands to pray for miraculous cures.

Healing Ibises. The most magnificent of these shrines, or Asclepieions, was somewhere near the Step Pyramid. It was especially holy because the body of the healer himself was believed to be buried near by. The pilgrims who came to Saqqara sacrificed ibises, which were sacred to Imhotep. Their carcasses were mummified and tucked away underground so that their souls would journey to the god and ask his healing favor. The shrine was deserted many centuries ago, and desert storms erased all surface traces of it. Not until Emery broke into its catacombs did anyone know what had become of the mum mies of all those ibises.

The professor, however, is bored with the embalmed birds. They are, after all, of Ptolemaic age, distressingly young for Egypt. But the network of tunnels apparently covers more than a square mile, and Emery intends to explore them thoroughly, no matter how many mummies he must disturb. His goal is the hidden tomb of history's first intellectual, and the mummy of the great Imhotep himself.

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