Peseshet
She lived so unimaginably long ago that even for the Egyptians of Nefertiti’s generation her time was seen as a distant antiquity. She lived when the pyramids had just started being built. It was seven centuries before the Babylonian King Hammurabi compiled his famous Code of Laws, eleven centuries before King Tut was born, and twenty-four centuries before Julius Caesar was assassinated in Rome.
Peseshet was the lady overseer of the female physicians of the royal court of ancient Egypt somewhere around 2400 BC, and was the earliest recorded female doctor and one of the first female scientists. She probably specialized in obstetrics, healing with herbs, and spiritual rituals, like other well-known female doctors from Egypt. Being a doctor in Ancient Egypt was a tremendous honor and almost always meant the highest rank in society, usually a Priest or Priestess.
Her name was discovered in the inscription in the tomb in the necropolis near the step pyramid of Saqqara. The tomb most likely belonged to her son, who himself had a title of the Priest Overseer, and Peseshet was among those whom he proudly acknowledged. If he was indeed her son, she obviously raised a good one.
