Movements in Art History Inspired Prints

 I haven't yet posted all the prints I made for #PrinterSolstice so here are some of the others!

Dada-inspired linocut by Ele Willoughby

This one of a kind lino block print combines multiple lino blocks in a Dada-inspired original artwork. Dada was a cultural movement post-WWI in response to the horrors of the war which often was satirical or nonsensical, breaking down all previous standards. Combining unrelated elements was common, as was the appearance of text, including of course, the repeated use of the word "Dada". It was a precursor to surrealism.

This print combines my spherical cow print, an eye and a skeleton with the repeated word "Dada" and is unique... but I made a second print with some of the same elements, but a tardigrade, rather than a skeleton.

Dada-inspired linocut by Ele Willoughby

This is a minimalist print inspired by the transit of Venus. Much like a solar eclipse, when our moon's orbit brings it between the Earth and sun, the transit of Venus occurs when the planet Venus passes directly between the sun and us (or any other planet) partially obscuring or occulting the disk of the sun. Venus is much larger than our moon, but much farther away, so it blocks a much smaller portion of the sun, for a much longer period; it typically appears like a small black dot slowly moving in a line across the face of the sun over the course of several hours. These transits are rare, but predictable. The separation between transits is: 121.5 years, 8years, 105.5 years. There have been two this century (in 2004 and 2012) and there will not be another until 2117. Historically such transits have been vital to astronomers in their efforts to gauge the size of our solar system. Astronomers travelled to remote sites across the globe to get multiple simultaneous observations of the event, and improve distance and size estimates using parallax of the various observations. 

The Transit of Venus, linocut by Ele Willoughby, 9" x11", 2022

The design of this print is inspired by Minimalism, an art movement post-WWII which espoused geometrical abstraction, and cutting away extraneous details, and sometimes even colours in favour of monochrome compositions. A hemicircle represents the solar disk and the series of smaller excised circles represent the path of Venus.

Goethe's Theory of Colours, Linocut by Ele Willoughby, 8" x 10", 2022

This print, inspired by the boldly coloured Fauvism paintings, is a hand-printed, limited edition, reduction block print portrait of writer, statesman and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). While best known for his contributions to German literature, he was pursued natural sciences, studying morphology, did work which presaged evolution, discovered the human intermaxillary bone, performed Galvanic experiments, studied anatomy with Alexander von Humboldt, formulated a theory of plant metamorphosis, gathered the largest private collection of minerals in Europe, and popularized a barometer he built based on Torricelli’s principle. What he considered his most important work was his Theory of Colours (Farbenlehre, 1810). 

Goethe rejected Newton’s description of colour and analytic approach. He wanted to portray rather than explain colour. He was a careful observer and claimed, “The human being himself, to the extent that he makes sound use of his senses, is the most exact physical apparatus that can exist.” He felt colour came from the interplay of light and dark through a turbid medium (like air, dust and moisture). He included aesthetic qualities such as the allegorical, symbolic, and mystic use of colour. His physics were not sound but he was the first to probe human colour perception and his insights inspired the art world (especially J. M. W. Turner) and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to write ‘Remarks on Colour’. 

My portrait is based on contemporary portraits, particularly a painting of Goethe in 1828 by Joseph Karl Stieler.

Horus and Seth, mono print by Ele Willoughby, 8" x 10", 2022

This is a one of a kind mono print about the Ancient Egyptian gods Horus and Seth, representing the struggle between order and chaos. My print is inspired by the Harlem Renaissance paintings of Aaron Douglas in particular, his layers of translucent colours, silhouettes and use of ancient Egyptian (and other African) culture, myth and imagery. 

This print shows Horus battling his uncle Seth. The story of their fight is NSFW as they say, but what I like in particular is that the ancient Egyptians believed both the god Horus, who represented order, amongst other things, and Seth (or Set), who represented chaos were necessary components for life and creativity.

This print was the first one I made with my new gel plate and stencils!

Flamboyant Wormhole, linocut by Ele Willoughby, 

This is a hand-printed Lino block print of an astrophysical wormhole, linking two locations in spacetime, inspired by Op Art. A wormhole, also called an Einstein-Rosen bridge, may exist, linking points in space-time like a sort of tunnel from one space and time to another. We don't know if they actually exist, but they are consistent with General Relativity and have been the subject of a lot of theoretical physics research and sci-fi. Space time is 4D, but if we represent it on the page, we can imagine it like a flat surface and then a wormhole would be a sort of tube from one area to another with a blackhole like a sort of drain leading to a white hole. If such structures exist, they may or may not be traversable, but it's conceivable they could allow time travel or faster than light travel or travel between different universes depending on the location of each end.  

Theia, linocut print by Ele Willoughby, 8" x10", 2022

This 6 colour hand printed linocut print illustrates the formation of the Earth’s Moon in a comic book influenced pop art style. The favoured model of Moon formation is that 4.5 billion years ago, early in the history of our solar system, a Mars-sized astronomical body called Theia crashed into the early proto-Earth. Large amounts of projectiles from this catastrophic collision, both rocks from Theia and the proto-Earth’s own mantle, coalesced under gravity to form this planet’s own satellite: the Moon. The giant-collision theory is supported by moon rock samples gathered during the Apollo missions and lunar asteroids found on Earth; these rocks so similar to the Earth's chemical and isotopic make-up suggest that the Earth and Moon have some shared history and that the Moon was not simply a capture object from elsewhere. But variations in the types and proportions of minerals found in Moon rocks versus here on Earth suggest that there's more to the story and it was not simply formed simultaneously with the Earth. The Moon is rich in minerals formed at high temperatures like we would expect from a massive impact event.

We can thank this catastrophic event, sometimes called 'The Big Splash' for the world as we know it, with stable orbit and climate thanks to having such an unusually large satellite in our Moon.

Peseshet, Actual Earliest Named Woman in Science or Medicine, Ancient Egyptian Overseer of the Female Physicians

 

Peseshet, Overseer of Physicians, linocut, 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby, 2020

Ada, Countess Lovelace, 3rd edition linocut by Ele Willoughby

 

 

It is once again Ada Lovelace Day, the 12th annual international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology, science and math, Ada Lovelace Day 2019 (ALD19). I'm sure you'll all recall, Ada, brilliant proto-software engineer, daughter of absentee father, the mad, bad, and dangerous to know, Lord Byron, she was able to describe and conceptualize software for Charles Babbage's computing engine, before the concepts of software, hardware, or even Babbage's own machine existed! She foresaw that computers would be useful for more than mere number-crunching. For this she is rightly recognized as visionary - at least by those of us who know who she was. She figured out how to compute Bernouilli numbers with a Babbage analytical engine. Tragically, she died at only 36. Today, in Ada's name, people around the world are blogging.

You can find my previous Ada Lovelace Day posts here. 

One of the things that has become very clear, participating in a dozen years of Ada Lovelace events, is not only that there has long been a large collection of under-recognized women in the history of science and technology, who need to be written back into the story, but that there is a large appetite for these stories. Representation matters. Women in STEM and girls who love science and technology are seeking evidence of precedence (of foremothers in science). So much so, that scientists and amateur historians are themselves seeking out stories and evidence of women trailblazers. Thus, when Canadian feminist medical doctor Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead (1867 – 1941), likely made an innocent error, misinterpreting a report and conflating two people, she accidentally started the paper trail for an non-existent ancient woman in medicine: Merit Ptah, reputedly the earliest recorded woman in medicine and subject of one of my portraits. Hurd-Mead confused the Overseer of Healer Woman that did exist, Peseshet (5th Dynasty, 2465-2323 BCE), with a name, tomb location and date for someone a bit earlier, giving this conflation of people "Merit Ptah" priority. Thus "Merit Ptah" became a bit of a feminist hero, and for instance, The International Astronomical Union even named the impact crater Merit Ptah on Venus after her. While "Merit Ptah" was not what she appeared, the idea that women have played a role in science and medicine since ancient times is quite true. Specifically, there is hard evidence both that medicine in ancient Egypt was was quite advanced for the ancient world, and admired by people from contemporary civilizations and that women participated in this work. Physicians, even in the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, while also often a sort of priest whose roll involved their religious beliefs and sympathetic magic, and quite different from our modern understanding of the role, did practise some things we would still recognize as science-based medicine. Specifically, we know Peseshet lived and worked as the Overseer of Women Physicians from a specifical inscription on her son's tomb.

 

Depiction of the Stela of the lady Peseshet from John F. Nunn, Acient Egyptian Medicine,
University of Oklahoma Press, 2002

 

The word for doctor is swnw (or swnwt for a woman; the suffix -t makes a word feminin, the way -e can make the feminine form of a French word) and is sometimes simplified as just the arrow symbol, indicating that doctors were initially the arrow-pullers, the people who treated those injured in battle. The name Peseshet is shown with the arrow hieroglyph in three separate places in the tomb of her son Akhet-hotep, a royal official and overseer of priests, who lived during the 5th Dynasty around 2400 BCE, and had an elaborate tomb build in the necropolis at Saqqara. Compassion for the suffering was an important moral consideration as they believed they would be judged on their morality through life when they reached the afterlife. Curing a patient would increase a doctor's standing but failing to do so was not viewed as a moral failing. They had no concept of the germ theory of disease, but luckily cleanliness was demanded of the priestly class and Egyptians in general bathed and purified their bodies often, and shaved their body hair as a means to fend off disease. Both surgery and prosthetics were part of ancient Egyptian medicine. There is a beautiful relief from the Temple of Kom Ombo showing surgical instruments, but this was made thousands of years after Peseshet's time. The oldest surgical tools discovered are from the 6th Dynasty. The mummification and ritual autopsy of human and animal corpses meant that ancient Egyptians had an extensive understanding of anatomy and generally managed to correctly infer the roles of major organs (though famously not the brain). They did prescribe medicines (which helps document their treatments and ancient pharmaceuticals). They are known to have used 160 distinct plant products for their medicinal uses.Some of the other earliest doctors recorded were moreorless contemporaries of Peseshet. Polymath Imhotep (late 27th century BCE) was ultimately deified and the Greeks identified him with their own god of medicine, Asklepios, so it is assumed he was a physician, though there is little hard evidence of this. Hesy-Ra (3rd Dynasty, 2687-2649 BCE) lived roughly the same time and is identified as both official and dentist. The fact that there were dentists at this time gives us a hint that there were already different medical specialists. Others include ophthalmologist, gastroenterologist, and proctologist; midwives were separate from doctors and were all female.  I think this indicates enough overlap with our own ideas about science and medicine to legitimately recognize Peseshet as an ancient trailblazer and woman in STEM.

 

I think this animation is a bit speculative, as the inscription above are all the specifics about Peseshet's life, but it does help bring to life how the Ancient Egyptian doctors did do things we expect doctors to do, such as dispense medicines, study anatomy, keep records, study and teach existing medical knowledge, but also involved their religious beliefs and sympathetic magic.

I made this new portrait of Peseshet, adapting my previous portrait of "Merit Ptah". The hieroglyphs indicate who she is (in fuschia) and her role. I have taken some artistic license and hope that this is reasonably accurate. Luckily for me, ancient Egyptians were not hung up on careful spelling and were pretty flexible in their use of hieroglyphics, so I hope that my combination gleaned from different sources is reasonably accurate. The rest of the hieroglyphs read "wer swnwt per aa" where "wer" means chief and I believe can be indicated by the swallow, "swnwt" is the feminine form of doctor, indicated by the arrow, pot and half-circle (for the feminine -t suffix), and "per aa" means great house or palace (the sort of rectangle with a opening is house and the last irregular shape indicated great).

 

References

 

Jakub Kwiecinski, 'Merit Ptah, “The First Woman Physician”: Crafting of a Feminist History with an Ancient Egyptian Setting,' Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 75, Issue 1, January 2020, Pages 83–106, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrz058

Published: 22 November 2019 

 

Michelle Star, 'The Story of That Famous Female Physician From Ancient Egypt Is Actually Wrong, ' Science Alert, 17 DECEMBER 2019

 

John F. Nunn, Acient Egyptian Medicine, University of Oklahoma Press, 2002  

 

Merit Ptah, wikipedia entry accessed March, 2018 and October 2020
 

Méryt-Ptah (médecin dans l'Égypte antique), wikipedia entry accessed March, 2018
 

27th-century BC women,  wikipedia entry accessed March, 201827th-century BC women, 
 

Ancient Egyptian Clothing,  wikipedia entry accessed March, 2018
 

Ancient Egyptian Costume History, Decoration and Coloring,  Costume and fashion history. Traditional Historical clothes, accessed March 2018
 

Tom Tierney, Ancient Egyptian Fashions, Mineola, N.Y.: Dover. p. 2. ISBN 9780486408064.
 

Ancient Egyptian Medicine, wikipedia entry accessed March 2018
 

Ancient Egyptian Medicine, from Ancient Egypt Online, accessed March, 2018
 

Aleksandrovna, J.O and Lvovna, M.G, The Social status of physicians in Ancient Egypt. Istoriya meditsiny (History of Medicine), 2015. Vol 2, No. 1, pp. 55-71.
 

Histoire de la médecine en Egypte ancienne, website accessed March, 2018
 

J.F. Nunn, The doctor in Ancient Egypt 
 

John F. Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, University of Oklahoma Press, 2002
 

Bruno Halioua, and Bernard Ziskind, Medicine in the Days of the Pharaohs, London Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2005. ISBN: 0674017021 9780674017023
 

H.W. Jansen, A History of Art, 3rd Edition, Harry N. Abrams, 1986 

Finding our predecessors as women in STEM, Pitfalls and Mistaken Identity of Merit Ptah

Merit Ptah, Chief Physician, linocut by Ele Willoughby, 11" x 14", 2018

An astronomy professor of mine memorably told our class that Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a dwell over a "woman of ill repute" - while colourful, this isn't true. The aristocrat Brahe was not supposed to marry a commoner, but he did, and she, like his sister, was involved in his scientific enterprise and does not deserve to be remembered vaguely and inaccurately as a "woman of ill repute".

Being a woman on the Internet, sometimes I receive none-too-polite "corrections" to history of science I present. Once I posted on Twitter about Marie Tharp and how she found the Mid-Atlantic ridge. I got a blunt reply from a professor of crystallography that this knowledge predates her by centuries. He was wrong. He was confusing knowledge of the rise (the geographic feature indeed known in broad strokes for centuries) with knowledge of the ridge (which is a geophysical feature where we now know new crust is born) which helped usher in the plate tectonics revolution in the latter part of the twentieth century. The fact that my doctorate in marine geophysics is a lot closer in subject matter than his did not protect me from being chastised, publicly, and wrongly. But, I am keenly aware that scientists themselves are not always the most accurate re-tellers of the history of science, and that we can fall into the pitfalls of repeating misinformation provided by fellow scientists. Sometimes, we can't resist a good story.

I was once told one of my scientist portraits was "an insult" because, though I had used several references, my anonymous critic has correctly inferred I had included a portrait of the subject's sister-in-law (which can be commonly found online, mislabelled as the scientist herself). While dismayed, I don't think this strident critic was reasonable or communicating productively. I used the incorrectly labelled portrait mainly as a reference for her clothing, so I think my error is regretable but not historically misleading. Sadly this critic's antagonism is all too common online.

In complete contrast, I'm quite impressed at the kindness and consideration of a recent message I received from medical historian Jakub Kwiecinski who has been researching Merit Ptah, reputedly the earliest recorded woman in medicine and subject of one of my portraits. He wrote me to say though he's a fan of my portrait (and has bought two), he's quite certain she didn't exist! He generously assumed I suspected as much. To be honest, I did not, but as I wrote about her here I was clear that information about her online was surprisingly thin, repetitive and often inaccurate. I had seen that the same information was repeated again and again, without ever seeming to find anything independent. I had also noted that there were no credible images of her, which seemed weird since there was allegedly an inscription about her made by her son. I also noted the existence of other documented near-contemporary ancient Egyptian doctors. I hadn't concluded that in fact this self-referential nest of authors citing each other was all perpetuating an untrue story. He included his article on the subject, where he carefully traces all information about her back to a single source from almost a century ago. He explains why it appeared that there were independent sources and gives a very credible explanation how the author who introduced her, Canadian feminist medical doctor Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead, likely made an innocent error, misinterpreting a report and conflating two people. The healer and Overseer of Healer Woman that did exist was  Peseshet (5th Dynasty, 2465-2323, later than supposed for Merit Ptah). Since the name, tomb location and date were confused with someone a bit earlier, that gave "Merit Ptah" priority. Kwiecinski's article is one half detective story, showing how all online sources and even published popular histories are interconnected and link back to Hurd-Mead and how she likely misinterpreted a report about Peseshet. The second half is a study of the role of popular histories, and how "Merit Ptah" became a feminist hero. While pointing out the dangers of secondary sources, and how amateur historians or scientists seeking female predecessors in their fields have different interests than historians (none of whom had written about Merit Ptah) the article doesn't chastise those who did write about Merit Ptah. Instead, it documents how the supposed existence of this doctor, has been very important to contemporary women in science and medicine. I, and this blog, actually make a cameo appearance in his article. As mentioned in footnote 87, my post was apparently the only one he found which cast doubt on Merit Ptah, pointing out that online images that purport to be her are clearly mislabelled (either men, or another woman who was named Merit Ptah who lived a full millennium later).  I'm tickled to have been cited in this scholarly publication for actually looking at online images and information with a critical eye!

The article 'Merit Ptah, “The First Woman Physician”: Crafting of a Feminist History with an Ancient Egyptian Setting' in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences is paywalled though the abstract is here. But the story has been picked up by the press, for instance this National Post article where Kwiecinski argues, “She is a very real symbol of the 20th-century feministic struggle to write women back into the history books, and to open medicine and STEM to women.”

So now, I have to figure out what to do with my portrait. As a print, I think it works. But, I don't want to perpetuate misconceptions. I could reimagine her as a symbol of legendary predecessors, of the feminist drive to point out that women did play a role in many historical endeavours, including science, though they have been left out of the story, rather than a portrait of an actual documented individual. I could also revise the print, change the hieroglyphics and making my Old Kingdom female doctor into Peseshet. Interestingly, I was able to find the actual inscription about Peseshet online. What to do when your historical portrait turns out to be of an imaginary person is an interesting problem. I think I might do both. I will continue to make the remaining Merit Ptah prints available, with a new description and I may also carve a new ancient Egyptian incription and print a second print with my doctor with real text which was written about a real woman Peseshet. What would you do?

Depiction of the Stela of the lady Peseshet from John F. Nunn, Acient Egyptian Medicine,
University of Oklahoma Press, 2002

Merit Ptah, Ancient Egyptian Chief Physician

Merit Ptah, Chief Physician, linocut by Ele Willoughby, 11" x 14", 2018

[Edit, January 16, 2020: Please see my latest post of the subject of Merit Ptah. New research indicates she never existed and her story was confusion about a real woman doctor Peseshet.]

Since it's Women's History Month, I thought I would like to add another women to my series of STEM portraits. I'm also interested in adding more women of colour to my collection; if women in the history of science are too often invisible, this is doubly so for WOC, who of course have been granted fewer opportunities to participate in science, throughout history. It turns out that the earliest recorded woman in science was a woman of colour and one of the earliest known person in STEM at all. Merit Ptah ("beloved of [the god] Ptah") lived circa 2700 BCE and was chief physician of the pharoah's court, implying not only that she was recognized as a doctor, who attended the pharoah, but that she trained and supervised other doctors, during the Second or Third Dynasty of Ancient Egypt.

This image is the first to come up for a Google image
search of Merit Ptah, but that dude is wearing a kilt.

Very little is known about Merit Ptah. Her image and an inscription left on her grave by her son, a Chief Priest, is found in Saqqara in Egypt's Valley of Kings. He describes her as the Chief Physician. I don't believe there exist any other known text or images relating to her. So researching her and figuring out how I could portray her was a challenge. In fact, I have not been able to find the portrait of her which can be found in Saqqara - or at least, I can not find an image I am convinced is in fact actually her. Since she is regarded as the earliest known woman in STEM, there are many articles about her, but they all seem to repeat the information above and they are illustrated with unconvincing images. I try to be cautious, as a scientist, to check references, and I know that sometimes when scientists write the history of science, they make mistakes that historians might have avoided. (Occassionally I read history of science where the converse is true, and I wish authors either had more pertinent science training or worked with scientists in the field to identify questions to ask and answer... but suspect scientists who over-estimate their knowledge of history are more common).

This image, and ones like it, are often used to illustrate
articles about Merit Ptah. These authors have done better.
I think this is a woman named Merit Ptah, but the complexity 
of the New Kingdom carving, her elaborate hairdo and crown 
reveal her as the wife of Ramsose and not the physician who
lived a millenium earlier!

I care about the history of science and want to do it justice, and am aware I lack training in history, or in this case Egyptology... though I was helped by the fact that I happened to have taken an undergraduate course in Ancient Egyptian Religion! So, I did have a bit of general knowlege about ancient Egypt which helped me avoid some of the misinformation out there. The first thing that people often miss is that Ancient Egyptian civilization spans more than three and a half thousand years, and it cannot all be lumped together. One funny fact that I recalled was that Egyptologists are able to date an image of people by variations in hair styles; my professor showed us an image of members of a royal family of a certain era and pointed out that the pharoah's wife had the latest hair style while her mother-in-law was still sporting that of a bygone era! Plus ça change... So, knowing that Merit Ptah can be confused for another woman of the same name, Merit-Ptah, the wife of Ramose, the Governor of Thebes and Vizier under Akhenaten, a full millenium later, I knew to consider her hair and dress when looking at images purporting to be of the physician.

Like hair styles, fashion also evolved and gives us a clue to era. This is a bit harder for a non-specialist to identify, since the basics of Ancient Egyptian dress did remain pretty similar for thousands of years. Both women and men often sported long hair and wore kolh around their eyes. The well-known Egyptian eye was not just for fashion. It served as sound preventative medicine as it helped protect against infections of the eye like conjuctivitis. In general, men wore kilts and women wore shealth dresses and shawls. But even just knowing this fact makes me question an image many articles claim is a bas relief of Merit Ptah; I'm pretty sure it depicts a man!

So after spending a few fruitless days seeking a contemporary portrait of Merit Ptah, I decided my best bet was to research medicine and doctors in Ancient Egypt, related hieroglyphs and images of women from the Second Dynasty. I sought images of non-royal women of status as well as researching the history of fashion, so that I could produce a plausible portrait, if not her likeness.

I've selected to use hieroglyphs to indicate who is shown and her role. I have taken some artistic license and hope that this is reasonably accurate. Luckily for me, ancient Egyptians were not hung up on careful spelling and were pretty flexible in their use of hieroglyphics, so I hope that my combination gleaned from different sources is reasonably accurate. It's not hard to find the name of the god Ptah in hieroglyphs but I was unsure if I just needed to append "beloved". Luckily the French wikipedia has an entry for the given name Méryt-Ptah name here which includes the hieroglyphs I've printed horizontally. I have her title vertically. From what I've read, I inferred that the inscription about Merit Ptah likely read "wer swnwt per aa" where "wer" means chief and I believe can be indicated by the swallow, "swnwt" is the feminine form of doctor, indicated by the arrow, pot and half-circle (for the feminine -t suffix), and "per aa" means great house or palace (the sort of rectangle with a opening is house and the last irregular shape indicated great).
Some the earliest doctors recorded were moreorless contemporaries of Merit Ptah. Polymath Imhotep (late 27th century BCE) was ultimately deified and the Greeks identified him with their own god of medicine, Asklepios, so it is assumed he was a physician, though there is little hard evidence of this. Hesy-Ra (3rd Dynasty, 2687-2649 BCE) lived roughly the same time and is identified as both official and dentist. The fact that there were dentists at this time gives us a hint that there were already different medical specialists. Others include ophthalmologist, gastroenterologist, and proctologist; midwives were separate from doctors and all female.  There is a second female doctor of the Old Kingdom, whose name is preserved: Peseshet (5th Dynasty, 2465-2323, later than Merit Ptah), "lady overseer of the female physicians" is often also identified as the earliest known female doctor, though some argue she might have been an overseer without being a doctor (which strikes me a bending over backwards to be extra skeptical of women participating in science... surely Occam's Razor would favour the hypothesis that the overseer of doctors would be a doctor? Though I suppose a Minister of Health might be more of an administrator than a doctor). Ancient Egyptian society was quite hierarchichal and there were a variety of different titles and ranks for doctors, which cannot be easily sorted out or matched with our modern categories.

Did Ancient Egyptian medicine warrant the name? That is, was it scientific? Well, while doctors were often a special sort of priest, and much of their practice involved their religious beliefs and sympathetic magic, there was indeed many ways in which Ancient Egyptian medicine was quite advanced for the ancient world, and admired by people from contemporary civilizations. They had no concept of the germ theory of disease, but luckily cleanliness was demanded of the priestly class and Egyptians in general bathed and purified their bodies often, and shaved their body hair as a means to fend off disease. The word for doctor is swnw (or swnwt for a woman; the suffix -t makes a word feminin, the way -e can make the feminine form of a French word) and is sometimes simplified as just the arrow symbol, indicating that doctors were initially the arrow-pullers, the people who treated those injured in battle. Compassion for the suffering was an important moral consideration as they believed they would be judged on their morality through life when they reached the afterlife. Curing a patient would increase a doctor's standing but failing to do so was not viewed as a moral failing. Both surgery and prosthetics were part of ancient Egyptian medicine. There is a beautiful relief from the Temple of Kom Ombo showing surgical instruments, but this was made thousands of years after Merit Ptah's time. The oldest surgical tools discovered are from the 6th Dynasty. (I avoided showing Merit Ptah as a surgeon since the 6th Dynasty occurred about 300 years later.) The mummification and ritual autopsy of human and animal corpses meant that ancient Egyptians had an extensive understanding of anatomy and generally managed to correctly infer the roles of major organs (though famously not the brain). They did prescribe medicines (which helps document their treatments and ancient pharmaceuticals). They are known to have used 160 distinct plant products for their medicinal uses. I think this indicates enough overlap with our own ideas about science and medicine to call Merit Ptah the earliest recorded woman in STEM (and to depict her offering medicine).


References

Merit Ptah, wikipedia entry accessed March, 2018
Méryt-Ptah (médecin dans l'Égypte antique), wikipedia entry accessed March, 2018
27th-century BC women,  wikipedia entry accessed March, 201827th-century BC women, 
Ancient Egyptian Clothing,  wikipedia entry accessed March, 2018
Ancient Egyptian Costume History, Decoration and Coloring,  Costume and fashion history. Traditional Historical clothes, accessed March 2018
Tom Tierney, Ancient Egyptian Fashions, Mineola, N.Y.: Dover. p. 2. ISBN 9780486408064.
Ancient Egyptian Medicine, wikipedia entry accessed March 2018
Ancient Egyptian Medicine, from Ancient Egypt Online, accessed March, 2018
Aleksandrovna, J.O and Lvovna, M.G, The Social status of physicians in Ancient Egypt. Istoriya meditsiny (History of Medicine), 2015. Vol 2, No. 1, pp. 55-71.
Histoire de la médecine en Egypte ancienne, website accessed March, 2018
J.F. Nunn, The doctor in Ancient Egypt 
John F. Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, University of Oklahoma Press, 2002

Bruno Halioua, and Bernard Ziskind, Medicine in the Days of the Pharaohs, London Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2005. ISBN: 0674017021 9780674017023
H.W. Jansen, A History of Art, 3rd Edition, Harry N. Abrams, 1986