6 T H E N E W-Y ORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY to the majesty of King Sened, deceased, because of its excellence." If we were to accept these last two statements as historical we should be obliged to conclude that the medical writings of Egypt were some of them produced as far back as the First Dynasty, that is, in the. thirty-third or thirty-fourth century before Christ. However this may be, there is no reason to doubt the existence of the medical rolls which were already numerous enough to fill a case in the days of the Pharaoh Neferirkere, in the twenty-eighth century before Christ. Although we do not today possess any surviving rolls as old as those just mentioned, we have several fragments which belong to the Middle Kingdom (about 2160—1788 B.C.): scanty remains of a treatise on diseases of women, even a veterinary manual on diseases of cattle, and some very important still unpublished fragments, probably the oldest such material known, which will be edited later by Dr. Alan H. Gardiner. The most important medical works surviving from ancient Egypt are a group of four almost or entirely complete treatises of somewhat later date. Two of these are in America and two in Europe: Papyrus Ebers in Leipzig, and the Berlin Medical Papyrus in the National Museum at Berlin; the Hearst Papyrus in the collections of the University of California, and the new Edwin Smith Papyrus, the property of The New York Historical Society. Of these documents the Berlin Papyrus is the latest (about thirteenth century B.C.), while Ebers, the Edwin Smith Papyrus, and Hearst, are much earlier. Papyrus Ebers dates from the beginnings of the Egyptian Empire in the early part of the sixteenth century B.C., while the script of the Edwin Smith Papyrus would indicate that it is probably slightly earlier, reaching back to 1600 or into the seventeenth century B.C. The New York Historical Society, therefore, is fortunate in possessing the oldest scientific book in America and the oldest nucleus of really scientific medical knowledge in the world. Among historical societies this is a unique distinction. It is gratifying to be able to add, also, the far more weighty fact that the Edwin Smith Papyrus contains incomparably the most important body of medical knowledge which has survived to us from ancient Egypt, or, for that matter, from the ancient Orient anywhere. The history of the document is curiously interesting and throws a picturesque light on early oriental studies in America. Mr. Edwin