Among the oldest and most important medical papyri of Ancient Egypt, it was purchased at Luxor in the winter of 1873–1874 by the German Egyptologist Georg Ebers.

The papyrus was written in Ancient Egypt in c. 1550 BCE, during the late Second Intermediate Period or early New Kingdom, but it is believed to have been copied from earlier Egyptian texts.

The ancient Egyptians seem to have known little about the kidneys and made the heart the meeting point of a number of vessels which carried all the fluids of the body—blood, tears, urine and semen.

The papyrus contains chapters on contraception, diagnosis of pregnancy and other gynecological matters, intestinal disease and parasites, eye and skin problems,[6] dentistry, the surgical treatment of abscesses and tumors, bone-setting, and burns.

The "channel theory" was prevalent at the time of writing of the Ebers papyrus; it suggested that unimpeded flow of bodily fluids is a prerequisite for good health.

[25] The use of animal and insect repellents derived from plants and other organisms found in nature is known from the time of the Ebers Papyrus.

The source of the papyrus is unknown, but it was said to have been found between the legs of a mummy in the El-Assasif district of the Theban necropolis.

In the early 1900s, Dr. Carl H. von Klein, alongside his daughter Edith Zitelmann, created a direct-to-English translation of the Ebers Papyrus.