Merit-Ptah
Sign in to saveMerit-Ptah ("Beloved of Ptah") was thought to be a female chief physician of the king's court during the Second Dynasty of Egypt, . She was purportedly referred as such on an inscription left on her grave at Saqqara by her son.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Gender
- female
- Citizenship
- Old Kingdom of Egypt
- Place of birth
- Old Kingdom of Egypt
- Place of death
- Old Kingdom of Egypt
- Occupation
- physician
- Field of work
- medicine
Show 4 more facts
- date of birth
- 2700-00-00
- date of death
- 2659-00-00
- time period
- Second Dynasty of Egypt
- Commons category
- Merit Ptah
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Encyclopedic overview
4 sectionsContents
- History
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Merit-Ptah ("Beloved of Ptah") was thought to be a female chief physician of the king's court during the Second Dynasty of Egypt, . She was purportedly referred as such on an inscription left on her grave at Saqqara by her son.
However, in recent times it has been argued that she most likely never existed, being a modern 1938 invention of Canadian feminist Kate Hurd-Mead. Jakub Kwiecinski, a historian at the University of Colorado, was cited by secondary source Newsweek arguing that the made-up story of Merit-Ptah exemplifies how "seemingly well-sourced Wikipedia articles" can mislead, and he cautioned against over-reliance on secondary sources.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Merit-Ptah” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.