Alchemy Part 3

Origins of Alchemy.--Numerous legends cluster round the
origin of alchemy. According to one story, it was founded
by the Egyptian god Hermes (Thoth), the reputed inventor of
the arts and sciences, to whom, under the appellation Hermes
Trismegistus, Tertullian refers as the master of those who
occupy themselves with nature; after him later alchemists
called their work the ``hermetic art,'' and the seal of
Hermes, which they placed upon their vessels, is the origin
of the common phrase ``hermetically sealed.'' Another legend,
given by Zosimus of Panopolis, an alchemistical writer said
to date from the 3rd century, asserts that the fallen angels
taught the arts to the women they married (cf. Genesis vi.
2), their instruction being recorded in a book called
Chema. A similar story appears in the Book of Enoch,
and Tertullian has much to say about the wicked angels who
revealed to men the knowledge of gold and silver, of lustrous
stones, and of the power of herbs, and who introduced the
arts of astrology and magic upon the earth. Again, the
Arabic Kitab-al-Fihrist, written by al-Nadim towards the
end of the 10th century, says that the ``people who practise
alchemy, that is, who fabricate gold and silver from strange
metals, state that the first to speak of the science of the
work was Hermes the Wise, who was originally of Babylon, but
who established himself in Egypt after the dispersion of the
peoples from Babel.'' Another legend, also to be found in Arabic
sources, asserts that alchemy was revealed by God to Moses and
Aaron. But there is some evidence that, in accordance with
the strong and constant tradition among the alchemists, the
idea of transmutation did originate in Egypt with the Greeks of
Alexandria. In the Leiden museum there are a number of papyri
which were found in a tomb at Thebes, written probably in the
3rd century A.D., though their matter is older. Some are
in Greek and demotic, and one, of peculiar interest from the
chemical point of view, gives a number of receipts, in Greek,
for the manipulation of base metals to form alloys which simulate
gold and are intended to be used in the manufacture of imitation
jewellery. Possibly this is one of the books about gold
and silver of which Diocletian decreed the destruction about
A.D. 290--an act which Gibbon styles the first authentic
event in the history of alchemy (Decline and Fall, chap.
xiii.). The author of these receipts is not under any
delusion that he is transmuting metals; the MS. is merely
a workshop manual in which are described processes in daily
use for preparing metals for false jewellery, but it argues
considerable knowledge of methods of making alloys and colouring
metals. It has been suggested by M. P. E. Berthelot that
the workers in these processes, which were a monopoly of the
priestly caste and were kept strictly secret, though fully
aware that their products were not truly gold, were in time
led by their success in deceiving the public to deceive
themselves also, and to come to believe that they actually
had the power of making gold from substances which were not
gold. Philosophical sanction and explanation of this belief
was then found by bringing it into relation with the theory
of the prima materia, which was identical in all bodies
but received its actual form by the adjunction of qualities
expressed by the Aristotelian elements--earth, air, fire and
water. Some support for this view is gained from study
of the alchemistical writings of the period. Thus, in the
treatise known as Physica et Mystica and falsely ascribed
to Democritus (such false attributions are a constant feature
of the literature of alchemy), various receipts are given
for colouring and gilding metals, but the conception of
transmutation does not occur. This treatise was probably
composed at a date not very different from that of the Leiden
papyrus. Later, however, as in the Commentary on this
work written by Synesius to Dioscorus, priest of Serapis at
Alexandria, which probably dates from the end of the 4th
century, a changed attitude becomes apparent; the more
practical parts of the receipts are obscured or omitted,
and the processes for preparing alloys and colouring
metals, described in the older treatise, are by a mystical
interpretation represented as resulting in real transmutation.