Object ID
1999.20.34E
Object Name
Other Documents
Language
English
Donor
Mary Economidys
Object Entities
Economidys, Mary (collected by)
Economidou, Maria (subject)
Access Points
Object Description

A typed ten paged document stapled together and is composed out of paper and black ink. The document, assumed lecture paper, is broken down into three paragraphs. Located at the top center of the page is the number -5-. The document reads, "Many factors were thus involved in the consolidation of the Asklepian myth: (1) the growing awareness of the Greeks of each other's beliefs, and of the customs of the other lands; (2) the growing influences of Egyptian culture, and (3) the growing cultural unity among the Greeks themselves, as expressed through vastly improved communication with poetry, drama, games, commerce, and philosophical and political debate. The consolidation of the Asklepian myth was part of a wider bringing0together of cultural conventionality, embracing the Olympian tradition with the Homeric, Heraklian and Thessian legends. Along with this, which was a popular trend, went the growing rationality in philosophy, exploration, history, la and medicine, which was probably not part of the popular movement, but which we, at our distance, tend to consider as the glory of classical Greece. This same dichotomy in health matters between rationality and popular belief had long before been developed in Egypt. Sigerist emphasized the cultural dichotomy, which has remained with us ever since. The rational medical tradition of Egypt was conventionalized in such surviving teaching text as the Smith Surgical Papyrus and the Ebers medical Papyrus, and in such practicing physician's formularies as the Hearst, London, and Berlin papyri. Along with this rational medical tradition, there also flourished a popular worship of Imhotep, who was a respected healer of perhaps the 3rd millennium B.C., but who was already deified in the 2nd. Both of these Egyptian medical traditions, the rational observational teaching stereotype, and the popular magical healing-god worship, may have influenced the classical Greek situation in regard to health affairs. This dichotomy probably occurred gradually in Greece as the Hellenic area stabilized in the last millennia B.C., and as extensive trade arose. Certainly" […]
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Citation
Other Documents, National Hellenic Museum, https://collections.nationalhellenicmuseum.org/Detail/objects/13787. Accessed 01/11/26.