idea of transmutation grew out of the practical receipts of Alexandrian Egypt, the alchemy which embraced it as a leading principle was also strongly affected by Eastern influences such as magic and astrology. The earliest Greek alchemistical writings abound with references to Oriental authorities and traditions. Thus the pseudo-Democritus, who was reputed the author of the Physica et Mystica, which itself concludes each of its receipts with a magical formula, was believed to have travelled in Chaldaea, and to have had as his master Ostanes[1] the Mede, a name mentioned several times in the Leiden papyrus, and often by early Christian writers such as Tertullian, St Cyprian and St Augustine. The practices of the Persian adepts also are appealed to in the writings of the pseudo-Democritus, Zosimus and Synesius. The philosopher’s egg, as a symbol of creation, is both Egyptian and Babylonian. In the Greek alchemists it appears as the symbol at once of the art and of the universe, enclosing within itself the four elements; and there is sometimes a play of words between τὸ ὄν and τὸ ᾠόν. The conception of man, the microcosm, containing in himself all the parts of the universe or macrocosm, is also Babylonian, as again probably is the famous identification of the metals with the planets. Even in the Leiden papyrus the astronomical symbols for the sun and moon are used to denote gold and silver, and in the Meteorologica of Olympiodorus lead is attributed to Saturn, iron to Mars, copper to Venus, tin to Hermes (Mercury) and electrum to Jupiter. Similar systems of symbols, but elaborated to include compounds, appear in Greek MSS. of the 10th century, preserved in the library of St Mark’s at Venice. Subsequently electrum (an alloy of gold and silver) disappeared as a specific metal, and tin was ascribed to Jupiter instead, the sign of mercury becoming common to the metal and the planet. Thus we read in Chaucer (Chanouns Yemannes Tale):—
The bodies sevene eek, lo! hem heer anoon:
Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe,
Mars yren, Mercurie quik-silver we clepe
Saturnus leed and Jupiter is tin,
And Venus coper, by my fader kin!
Literature of Alchemy.—A considerable body of Greek chemical writings is contained in MSS. belonging to the various great libraries of Europe, the oldest being that at St Mark’s, just mentioned. The contents of these MSS. are all of similar composition, and in Berthelot’s opinion represent a collection of treatises made at Constantinople in the 8th or 9th century. The treatises are nearly all anterior to the 7th century, and most appear to belong to the 3rd and 4th centuries; some are the work of authentic authors like Zosimus and Synesius, while of others, such as profess to be written by Moses, Democritus, Ostanes, &c., the authorship is clearly fictitious. Some of the same names and the same works can be identified in the lists of the Kitáb-al-Fihrist. But the Arabs did not acquire their knowledge of this literature at first hand. The earliest Hellenic culture in the East was Syrian, and the Arabs made their first acquaintance with Greek chemistry, as with Greek philosophy, mathematics, medicine, &c., by the intermediary of Syriac translations. (See Arabian Philosophy and Syriac Literature.) Examples of such translations are preserved in MSS. at the British Museum, partly written in Syriac, partly in Arabic with Syriac characters. In Berthelot’s opinion, the Syriac portions represent a compilation of receipts and processes undertaken in the Syrian school of medicine at Bagdad under the Abbasids in the 9th or 10th century, and to a large extent constituted by the earlier translations made by Sergius of Resaena in the 6th century. They contain, under the title Doctrine of Democritus, a fairly methodical treatise in ten books comprising the Argyropoeia and Chrysopoeia of the pseudo-Democritus, with many receipts for colouring metals, making artificial precious stones, effecting the diplosis or doubling of metals, &c. They give illustrations of the apparatus employed, and their close relationship to the Greek is attested by the frequent occurrence of Greek words and the fact that the signs and symbols of the Greek alchemists appear almost unchanged. The other portion seems of somewhat later date. Another Syriac MS., in the library of Cambridge University, contains a translation of a work by Zosimus which is so far unknown in the original Greek. Berthelot gives reproductions of the British Museum MSS. in vol. ii. of La Chimie au moyen âge.
Several alchemistical treatises, written in Arabic, exist in manuscript in the National Library at Paris and in the library of the university of Leiden, and have been reproduced by Berthelot, with translations, in vol. iii. of La Chimie au moyen âge. They fall into two groups: those in one are largely composed of compilations from Greek sources, while those in the other have rather the character of original compositions. Of the first group the most interesting and possibly the oldest is the Book of Crates; it is remarkable for containing some of the signs used for the metals by the Greek alchemists, and for giving figures of four pieces of apparatus which closely resemble those depicted in Greek MSS., the former being never, and the latter rarely, found in other Arabic MSS. Its concluding words suggest that its production was due to Khalid ben Yezid (died in 708), who was a pupil of the Syrian monk Marianus, and according to the Kitáb-al-Fihrist was the first Mussulman writer on alchemy. The second group consists of a number of treatises professing to be written by Jaber, celebrated in Latin alchemy as Geber (q.v.). Internal evidence suggests that they are not all from the same hand or of the same date, but probably they are not earlier than the 9th nor later than the 12th century. The Arabic chroniclers record the names of many other writers on alchemy, among the most famous being Rhazes and Avicenna.
But the further development of alchemy took place in the West rather than in the East. With the spread of their empire to Spain the Arabs took with them their knowledge of Greek medicine and science, including alchemy, and thence it passed, strengthened by the infusion of a certain Jewish element, to the nations of western Europe, through the medium of Latin translations. The making of these began about the 11th century, one of the earliest of the translators, Constantinus Africanus, wrote about 1075, and another, Gerard of Cremona, lived from 1114 to 1187. The Liber de compositione alchemiae, which professes to be by Morienus—perhaps the same as the Marianus who was the teacher of Khalid—was translated by Robertus Castrensis, who states that that he finished the work in 1182, and speaks as if he were making a revelation—“Quid sit alchemia nondum cognovit vestra Latinitas.” The earlier translations, such as the Turba Philosophorum and other works printed in collections like the Artis auriferae quam chemiam vocant (1572), Theatrum chemicum (1602), and J. J. Manget’s Bibliotheca chemica curiosa (1702), are confused productions, written in an allegorical style, but full of phrases and even pages taken literally from the Greek alchemists, and citing by name various authorities of Greek alchemy. They were followed by treatises of a different character, clearer in matter, more systematic in arrangement, and reflecting the methods of the scholastic logic; these are farther from the Greek tradition, for although they contain sufficient traces of their ultimate Greek ancestry, their authors do not know the Greeks as masters and cite no Greek names. So far as they are Latin versions of Arabico-Greek treatises, they must have been much remodelled in the course of translation; but there is reason to suppose that many of them, even when pretending to be translations, are really original compositions. It is curious that although we possess a certain number of works on alchemy written in Arabic, and also many Latin treatises that profess to be translated from Arabic, yet in no case is the existence known of both the Arabic and the Latin version. The Arabic works of Jaber, as contained in MSS. at Paris and Leiden, are quite dissimilar from the Latin works attributed to Geber, and show few if any traces of the positive chemical knowledge, as of nitric acid (aqua dissolutiva or fortis) or of the mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids known as aqua regis or regia, that appears in the latter. The treatises attributed to Geber, in fact, appear to be original works composed not earlier than the 13th century and fathered on Jaber in order to enhance
- ↑ An alchemistical work bearing the name of Ostanes speaks of a divine water which cures all maladies—an early appearance of the universal panacea or elixir of life.
