The culture of Ancient Egypt had a crucial role in the shaping of classical Greek and Roman culture and science (including medicine) as well as in the historical evolution of ancient society. There were some specifi c characteristics in the position of the art of healing and the healer, i.e. the physician, in the society of Ancient Egypt. The ‘event of death’ evoked in the hearts of ancient Egyptians neither asceticism nor philosophical pessimism, but a strong and overwhelming ‘joie de vivre’, for they were people of action struggling against death