ABSTRACT
Psherenptah could justify sexual and alcoholic excess by saying, 'It's what Taimhotep would have wanted.' Her funerary stela demonstrates how sex was intrinsically pleasurable to the Egyptians, but it was much more than that. Sex was also a therapy, a way of maintaining good health in an environment fraught with all kinds of dangers. The act of sex had many physical and emotional benefits for the partners, and these are made clear by the medical writers who were read in Egypt. Indeed, indigenous Egyptian magico-medicallore may have had a major influence on the development of Greek medicine. 2 Many Greek ideas about physiology,
especially that of women, find parallels, if not actual antecedents, in Egyptian texts. One of the most important of these was that the womb was a mobile viscus which could move around independently in the free passage between the vagina and the upper reaches of the body. This idea, very important for the gynaecologies of the medical followers of Hippocrates, is first found in Egyptian medical papyri as early as the Twelfth Dynasty, c. 1850 BCE.3 A woman's body was a breeding bag, constructed around her uterus; and the free passage between her mouth and reproductive organs was the basis for all kinds of diagnostics. Birth prognoses in particular utilised this. They usually work on the principle that if something pungent, like a head of garlic or an onion, is placed in the woman's vagina, it will be smelt on the breath of the woman the next day if the passage between them is unblocked by a foetus. 4 The medical writers of the Hippocratic corpus refined such ideas. Women's bodies were thought to be qualitatively different to those of men. For women to be healthy and function properly, their bodies needed to remain colder and wetter than men, in whom hot and dry elements should predominate. Men's bodies were stronger than women's, because their flesh was firmer and hotter, and thus more able to withstand extremes. If a woman became 'unbalanced' and too dry and mannish, her uterus might start to wander. If, for whatever reason, she became too desiccated, her womb might migrate upwards in search of damper regions where its equilibrium could be restored. This might happen if she took too much exercise or engaged in an unsuitable occupation. 5 Spells to prevent the uterus wandering are found in the Greek magical papyri of the Roman period. This spell (PGM VII 260-71, excerpted) contrives to keep it in its place:
I conjure you, 0 womb ... to return again to your place, and that you do not turn [to one side) into the right part of the thorax or into the left part of the thorax, and that you do not gnaw into the heart like a dog, but remain indeed in your own intended and proper place.
