Ebers, Georg

Ebers, Georg

 

Born Mar. 1, 1837, in Berlin; died Aug. 7, 1898, in Tutzing, Bavaria. German Egyptologist.

Ebers was a professor at the universities of Jena (1865–70) and Leipzig (1870–89). While traveling in Egypt in 1872–73, he acquired the most extensive (known up to that time) ancient Egyptian medical treatise, which he published in 1875 and which has become known as the Ebers Papyrus. Ebers gained fame for his illustrated, popular descriptions of ancient and modern Egypt and particularly for his historical novels drawn from the life of ancient and Greco-Roman Egypt and medieval Germany, most of which were translated into Russian, including An Egyptian Princess (1883 and 1913), Uarda (1892), and The Burgomaster’s Wife (1882). These novels quite accurately depict details of everyday life and mores, but they seldom accurately interpret historical events or truthfully portray historical figures.

WORKS

Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–32. Stuttgart, 1893–97.
Die Geschichte meines Lebens. Stuttgart, 1893.
In Russian translation:
Sobr. soch., vols. 1–13. St. Petersburg, 1896–99.