Regensburg, 1546: a burgher's daughter with a great voice sings before the Emperor Charles V, and the son she bears him will grow up to be Don John of Austria and win Lepanto — but the novel stays with her, and with what the Empire does to a woman it has finished using. Ebers was an Egyptologist who found the medical papyrus that bears his name; he wrote historical fiction to fund the digging, and the sixteenth century here is documented to the ledger.

A physician in an old German town has a remedy that may or may not be what he claims, and a household stakes everything on it. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name — one of the oldest medical texts in existence — and dug in Egypt for years; the interest here is that a man who had read the world's first prescriptions was writing about faith in medicine.

A German town in the sixteenth century, a Jewish physician's daughter, a Christian boy, and one word — spoken, not meant — that decides both their lives. Ebers was an Egyptologist who found the medical papyrus that bears his name and wrote fiction to fund the digging; this novel steps out of Egypt into Reformation Germany, and the machinery of religious hatred in a small town is documented with a scholar's exactness.

Leiden, 1574: the Spanish are outside the walls, the city is starving, and the burgomaster's wife holds the household — and half the town's nerve — together while her husband refuses to surrender. Ebers was a German Egyptologist who found the medical papyrus that still bears his name, one of the oldest medical texts in existence; he wrote historical novels to pay for the digging, and the scholarship shows.

Nuremberg in 1281: a smith's forge, a knight, a girl of the patrician class, and an Emperor — Rudolph of Hapsburg — holding a diet in a city where the guilds and the old families are not speaking. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name and dug in Egypt for years; the free imperial city here is reconstructed from charters, and the forge is not a metaphor.

Germany, 1500: a roadside inn called the Blue Pike, a company of travellers snowed in together — a knight, a monk, a player, a Jewish physician — and one night of talk in which the coming century is argued out. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name and dug in Egypt for years; here he leaves Egypt for the eve of the Reformation, and the inn is a cross-section of a world about to break.

Two sisters serve as recluses in the temple of Serapis at Memphis, pouring libations for the dead, and the elder is noticed by the King — which is the worst thing that can happen to her. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name and dug in Egypt for years; the Ptolemaic temple in this 1880 novel is reconstructed from papyri he had read himself, including the real petitions of real recluses.

The Exodus told through an Egyptian officer of Hebrew birth — Hosea, who will be called Joshua — caught between the army he has served and the people he is asked to lead out. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name and dug in Egypt for years; he wrote this in 1889 with the archaeology of the Delta at his fingertips, and the plagues are described as a man of that court would have understood them.

Alexandria under the first Ptolemies: a sculptor takes a girl of Tennis as his model for Arachne, the mortal who challenged a goddess at the loom and was punished for winning. Ebers was an Egyptologist who wrote fiction to pay for excavations; this late novel is about art and hubris, and the weaving, the guilds and the harbour are all reconstructed from what he had personally dug up.

The Complete Novels of Georg Ebers gathers the historical romances through which Ebers transformed antiquarian learning into vivid narrative art. Set chiefly in ancient Egypt, the Roman world, and the early Christian era, these novels combine archaeological precision, melodramatic plotting, moral conflict, and richly painted settings. Written in the nineteenth-century tradition of learned historical fiction, they stand beside the works of Bulwer-Lytton and Flaubert in their ambition to ani...

Georg Moritz Ebers (Berlin, March 1, 1837 – Tutzing, Bavaria, August 7, 1898), German Egyptologist and novelist, discovered the Egyptianmedical papyrus, of ca. 1550 BCE, named for him (see Ebers Papyrus) at Luxor (Thebes) in the winter of 1873–74. Now in the Library of the University of Leipzig, the Ebers Papyrus is among the most important ancient Egyptian medical papyri. It is one of two of the oldest preserved medical documents anywhere—the other being the Edwin Smith Papyrus (ca. 1600 ...

Georg Moritz Ebers (Berlin, March 1, 1837 – Tutzing, Bavaria, August 7, 1898), German Egyptologist and novelist, discovered the Egyptianmedical papyrus, of ca. 1550 BCE, named for him (see Ebers Papyrus) at Luxor (Thebes) in the winter of 1873–74. Now in the Library of the University of Leipzig, the Ebers Papyrus is among the most important ancient Egyptian medical papyri. It is one of two of the oldest preserved medical documents anywhere—the other being the Edwin Smith Papyrus (ca. 1600 ...