Georg Ebers

Georg Ebers was born in Berlin and was the youngest of the five children of an affluent family of bankers and porcelain manufacturers.

[1] His mother ran a salon popular among members of the intelligentsia, which included Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the Grimm Brothers, and Alexander von Humboldt.

He had made two scientific journeys to Egypt, and his first work of importance, Ägypten und die Bücher Moses, appeared in 1867–1868.

[2] Ebers early conceived the idea of popularising Egyptian lore by means of historical romances.

His subsequent works of the same kind — Uarda (1877), Homo sum (1878), Die Schwestern (1880), Der Kaiser (1881), of which the scene is laid in Egypt at the time of Hadrian, Serapis (1885), Die Nilbraut (1887), and Kleopatra (1894) — were also well received, and did much to make the public familiar with the discoveries of Egyptologists.

For his life, see his Die Geschichte meines Lebens (Stuttgart, 1893); also R. Gosche, G. Ebers, der Forscher und Dichter (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1887).