[Under the primacy of funerary cult? Surgery in Ancient Egypt]

Rational, natural-philosophical disease theory places ancient Egyptian medicine above the magical-demonistic perceptions of other contemporary advanced cultures. The rational element emerges even more strongly in teaching about wounds--traumatology. It was this that gained Egyptian medical science such high regard in the ancient world. In both areas (internal medicine and traumatology), written sources provide us with a really useful picture. By contrast, details of an operative, elective surgery are almost completely lacking. Illustrative sources and anthropological finds do, nonetheless, feed the suspicion that elective surgery could have been measured in traumatology. However, this image is relativised by an anthology and discussion of all tangible finds, and their classification into the overall source context. Even if the technological capacity for elective surgery had been entirely available in ancient Egypt, it appears that ancient Egyptian physicians generally abstained from operative surgery--a voluntary abstention, the roots of which are to be found in the religio-cultural customs and in the religious obligation to keep the body intact for the afterlife. Even in their most rational form, ancient Egyptian medical science was, therefore, limited by beliefs about the after-life and funerary cult.