Ebers

Ebers, GEORG MORITZ, a distinguished Egyptologist and novelist, was born 1st March 1837, at Berlin, was educated at Froebel's school, and studied law at Göttingen. He afterwards devoted himself to the study of Egyptology at Berlin, in pursuit of which he visited the chief museums of Europe. He established himself in 1865 as a lecturer at Jena, where in 1868 he was made professor. Next year he made a long journey to the East, and in 1870 was called to Leipzig as professor of Egyptology. His visit to Egypt had resulted in the discovery of the celebrated hieratic medical Papyrus Ebers, which he published in 1875. His most important work besides this is Ägypten und die Bücher Moses (vol. i., all published, 1868). His interesting and picturesque, if slight, Durch Gosen zum Sinai, and Aegypten in Bild und Wort, have been translated into English (Through Goshen to Sinai, 1872; and Egypt, Descriptive, Historical, and Picturesque, 2 vols. 1880). In 1876 he became paralysed, and necessary inaction induced him to continue the writing of historical novels, which he had begun as early as 1864 with his Egyptian Princess, in which a good plot is made the foundation for much Egyptological learning. Other romances are Uarda (1877), Homo Sum (1878), The Sisters (1880), The Emperor and The Burgomaster's Wife (1881), Only a Word (1883), Serapis (1885), Margery (1889), Per Aspera (1892), and Cleopatra (1894)—all Englished—besides shorter tales, a story in verse (Elifên, 1888), and, with Guthe, a book on Palestine (1887). Ill-health compelled him to resign his post, and he lived mainly in Munich. He died 7th August 1898. See his Story of my Life (trans. 1893), and a work by Gosche (1887).