Merit-Ptah

Merit-Ptah ("Beloved of Ptah") was thought to be a female chief physician[1] of the pharaoh's court during the Second Dynasty of Egypt, c. 2700 BCE; she is purportedly referred as such on an inscription left on her grave at Saqqara by her son.

[2][3][4][5] However, in recent times it has been argued that she most likely never existed,[6][7] being a modern 1938 invention of a Canadian feminist called Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead.

Later authors did not notice that Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead presented two doctors and mixed the data of the two women; Merit-Ptah was thus back-dated to the Old Kingdom.

[11] Campbell Hurd-Mead in her book describes a tomb in the Valley of the Kings where there was a picture of a woman doctor named Merit Ptah, the mother of a high priest, who is calling her 'the Chief Physician.'

[12] A namesake, yet completely unrelated woman was the wife of Ramose, the Governor of Thebes and Vizier under Akhenaten, and she is depicted along with her husband in TT55 in Sheikh Abd el-Qurna.