00:00One of ancient Egypt's legendary gods of healing wasn't a mythical being at all.
00:05He was a real, mortal man who actually walked the earth.
00:08His name was Imhotep, and 4,600 years ago, he was just a regular human serving a mortal pharaoh.
00:15But Imhotep was a brilliant physician.
00:18Instead of relying on magic spells to cure sickness,
00:21he pioneered a scientific approach to treating injuries through careful observation.
00:26And as if that wasn't enough, he was also a master architect.
00:29He designed the Steppe Pyramid of Saqqara, Egypt's first monumental stone structure.
00:35Imhotep was so impossibly ahead of his time that as centuries passed after his death,
00:40the facts of his life faded.
00:42His earthly accomplishments grew so massive that they mutated into myth.
00:46Later generations of Egyptians completely forgot he was human.
00:49They elevated him to a literal deity of medicine.
00:53Sick people traveled to mysterious cult temples,
00:56praying to his golden idols for supernatural healing.
00:59Imhotep didn't achieve immortality through magic.
01:02His human intellect was just so advanced
01:04that history simply couldn't comprehend his mortal mind
01:07as anything less than a literal god.
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