Meet Merit-Ptah, the ancient Egyptian doctor who didn’t exist | Science Heroes - Massive Science

Though created by accident, her story fit neatly with burgeoning 20th century feminism, according to a report from tropical forest ecologist and PhD student at Wake Forest University Cassie Freund.

Matteo Farinella

Legend has it that the first woman doctor in recorded history lived in ancient Egypt nearly 5000 years ago, around 2700 BCE. But sometimes legends are merely legends for a reason: the doctor in question, Merit-Ptah, probably did not exist. She’s still our science hero.

Ancient Egypt held women in high esteem. Many of the Egyptian deities were goddesses, including Hathor (goddess of love and fertility), Ma’at (goddess of truth and order), and Nut (goddess of the sky). The goddess Sekhmet, depicted with a human body but the head of a lion, was the patron of doctors and healers. Women had equal rights to men. They could own land and businesses, wear whatever they wanted, divorce their husbands, and hold powerful social positions. Merit-Ptah, rumored to be the first recorded woman physician in history, was thought to be the chief doctor of the royal court around 2700 BC. Her picture was even on one of the pyramids in the Valley of the Kings.  
Or, was it?...

Merit-Ptah’s life was a myth. But her popularity reflects the very real hunger of women to be seen as equals in science and medicine. And although Merit-Ptah’s story started, and initially proliferated, in white and Eurocentric circles, Kwiecinski notes that she also featured in Afrocentric black history, where she shined as “an example of the scientific genius of the black Africans.”
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Source: Massive Science