Nuremberg in the early fifteenth century: a merchant's household, an Emperor's visit, plague on the roads, and a girl who must choose between the man she wants and the family that made her. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name and wrote historical fiction alongside his scholarship; here he leaves Egypt for the free imperial city, and the guilds, the money and the church politics are all documented. Fifty-five plates, from Dürer to Munch, trace the forest, the fair and the ol...

Alexandria after Actium: the fleet is gone, Antony is drinking, and Cleopatra — forty, brilliant, out of options — tests poisons and negotiates with Octavian's envoy while a young sculptor and his brother are destroyed at the edges of it. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name and dug in Egypt for years; his Cleopatra is a working monarch, not a temptress, and the archaeology is exact. Sixty plates of Roman ruins, capricci and the Colosseum by painters including Panini and Pie...

Thebes under Rameses II: a paraschites' granddaughter, a young priest, a princess, and the temple politics of a state where the priesthood outranks the throne. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name and dug in Egypt for years; this 1877 novel made his reputation, and its rituals, titles and streets are drawn from the monuments and papyri he knew as a scholar. Fifty-eight plates of Roman ruins and capriccios, from Panini and Lanfranco to the Colosseum and Forum, echo the monume...

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 ...

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. Fifty-six plates of painting, from Alma-Tadema to Rizzoni, carry the ancient world ...

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. Fifty-nine plates of Roman ruins and Caesar's fate, from Panini to Pasinelli, echo the ancient world Ebers ...

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. Fifty-four plates, from Lucas Cranach to Edvard Munch, trace the Northern European town and its uneasy interiors across five...

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. Fifty-four plates of castles and coastal fortifications, from Peel Castle to Windsor, by painters including Thomas Bardwell ...

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. Fifty-nine plates, from Dürer's Erasmus and Munch's Death and the Child t...

The Blue Pike, a crowded inn at the turn of the sixteenth century, on an evening when Nuremberg patricians with an escort of mercenaries, Dominican monks and a band of strolling players all arrive at once — among the players Kuni, a pale young girl with a crippled leg, whose story it becomes, from that evening through the months that follow. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name and dug in Egypt for years; here he leaves Egypt for Germany on the eve of the Reformation, and th...

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. Fifty-six plates, from Dürer and Luca...