The Alchemical Papyri of Egypt

M. Berthelot,
the Scientific Review
January 17, 1885

There is a collection of Egyptian papyri in Leiden, which contains the oldest alchemical manuscripts known to date. Their origin, their date and the concordance of their indications with those of the Greek manuscripts of our libraries and those of the papyri of the Louvre and Berlin. provide the story of thealchemy an indisputable historical basis and give rise to the most interesting comparisons. This is why it seems useful to enter into some details on the origin and the content of these papyri.

The Leyden collection has as its main background a collection of Egyptian antiquities, brought together in the first quarter of the 19th century . century, by the knight of Anastasy, vice-consul of Sweden in Alexandria, collection purchased in 1828 by the government of the Netherlands. It contained, among other objects, more than a hundred manuscripts on papyrus, twenty-four on canvas, one on leather, etc. Among these papyri there were twenty in Greek and three bilingual, etc. These papyri were the subject of a general description with commentary by Reuvens, director of the museum of Leiden, under the title of letters to Mr. Letronne (three in number), printed in Leiden in 1830. Mr. Leemans, who succeeded Mr. Reuvens in the management of the museum, has published for forty years a large series of papyri, taken from the collections in his custody. But so far he has given but little of the Greek papyri in question, and we know these chiefly from the letters of Reuvens.alchemy and which Reuvens had already spoken about. It is from the publications of Reuvens and Mr. Leemans that I have drawn most of the information which will follow. I have completed and clarified them with the help of the photograph that I have in my hands of two capital pages of the most important, pages relating to the transmutation of metals and to the dyeing in purple.

Three of these papyri, in fact, relate to alchemy. They seem to date back to the third century of our era, and to a period prior to the official establishment of Christianity. They seem to have been part of the same find, probably taken from the tomb of some Theban magician. They are, in a word, manuscripts of the same order as the alchemical books burned by Diocletian, according to the testimony of John of Antioch, of Suidas and of the Acts of Saint Procopius. magic, astrology, alchemy, the study of metallic alloys, that of purple dyeing and that of the virtues of plants are intimately associated with it, in accordance with the traditions reported by Tertullian and by Zozimos. We find there the names of Democritus and Ostanes, always as in the manuscripts of our libraries and in Pliny. The name of Democritus is similarly indicated as that of an astronomer, associated with that of Eudoxus in a papyrus of the Louvre, written in the time of the Antonines, and published by our Academy of Inscriptions. The serpent biting its tail (Ouroboros) likewise figures in the papyri of Leyden and in those of Berlin, as well as in the alchemical manuscripts of the libraries. One reads there magic alphabets as in our manuscripts.The astronomical symbols of the sun and the moon are applied to. plant names, and to those of gold and silver, always as among the alchemists. They are also found in the Berlin papyri.

Gnostic ideas, the mysterious number four, common to. Egyptians, Gnostics and alchemists, and even the apocryphal authority of the Jews and of Moses, are similarly invoked there; we also find Moses and the Gnostic tradition in the Berlin papyri.

Let's get into some details.

Papyri n° 65 and n° 75 of Reuvens are bilingual and seem to date back to the first half of the 3rd century. The second contains an older hieratic Egyptian text, with Greek text inscribed on the inner side. The first contains, in addition, interlinear transcriptions of demotic words, written in Greek; it comes from Thebes. These two papyri bear the marks of daily use and usual reading: they are magic rituals, which the possessor consults frequently.

Indeed, n° 75 is devoted to magic ceremonies, carried out through the intervention of mystical love, considered as a great thaumaturgical power, Such are the evocation of a ghost; the making of an image of love; the recipe for a potion made from various plants; the mystical recipe for success in business; several recipes to obtain or send a dream; the consultation of the deity, who responds in the form of a serpent-headed god ( theomantion ); a method of bringing bad luck to someone; another to stop his anger.

Then come gold refining processes; finally a recipe for making a ring acting as a talisman, by engraving on a jasper set in this ring the figure of a snake biting its tail, the moon with two stars and the sun above. This is a figure whose analogue is found in the engraved stones of the National Library and in our alchemical manuscripts. Tyrannical love figures similarly in these, in the middle of a recipe for transmutation, in an incomprehensible sentence, which seems the shred of some old mutilated text. We find there again love extracting gold in a mystical exposition, where it is a question of a treatise by Kron-Ammon, another enigmatic character.

Then we read in the papyrus a table in figures, to predict by calculations the life or the death of a patient, table attributed to Democritus and analogous to the table of Hermes and the sphere of Petosiris of the manuscripts of the National Library, then comes a formula to bring about a separation between spouses; another to cause insomnia until the patient dies; a potion to excite friendship, composed of plants, minerals and magic letters; finally explanations of mystical names of plants, etc.

All this thaumaturgy responds to the practices of the Gnostic sects and Iamblichus. The very names of the ceremonies are the same among the Gnostics and in the papyri: which would still fix the date of the latter towards the third century. Divination by dreams, which appears in the preceding papyrus, is still found in the Berlin papyri, which also deal with magic. She is also associated with thealchemy in the manuscript of Saint Mark, and in the authentic works which remain to us of Bishop Synesius. The translation of the hieratic text written above in the papyrus, an older text, will perhaps date the practices described in this papyrus even earlier.
Be that as it may, the mixture of alchemical recipes and magical practices is very characteristic. The indication of the table of Democritus and that of the serpent Ouroboros surrounding the figures of stars, which are found both in the Leyden papyrus and in the alchemical manuscripts, are no less so.

Papyrus No. 65 is also magical; its reverse bears the names of various animal, mineral and vegetable products, among which salamander, sal ammonia, aphroselinum (selenite), magnetic magnet stone (magnes), magnesla, eyebrow of the sun and eyebrow of the moon; this one represented by an astrological sign. These last terms still seem to relate to gold and silver: the whole contains undoubted indications ofalchemy .

Papyrus no. 66 is especially capital from this point of view, because it is no longer a question of simple indices, but of a hundred articles, relating to the manufacture of alloys, purple dyeing and materia medica. It is a book on papyrus, in folio format, 0.30 m high by 0.18 m wide, originating from Thebes: it consists of ten whole sheets, folded in two and stapled, of which only eight are written. So that makes sixteen written pages containing about seven hundred and twenty lines; they are very legible, as I was able to ascertain from the photograph of two of these pages: the writing would be from the beginning of the third century .

Each article has a title. They are recipes pure and simple, without theory, all similar in purpose and wording to a group of formulas inscribed in the Greek manuscripts of our libraries. I think these latter formulas were probably originally transcribed from papyri similar to this one. The text itself of the articles of the papyrus that I was able to obtain in integro is not quite identical in any case to that of our manuscripts; but the resemblance is none the less striking, as I will show.

Let us point out the main subjects treated in the articles of the papyrus, by bringing them closer on the occasion to the similar titles of manuscript 2327 of the national library of Paris. I will group them under the following heads: lead, tin, copper, silver and asemon, gold, purple, various minerals.
Lead. - Purification and hardening of lead.

The first title appears barely modified in manuscript 2327 and the second subject is also treated there.

Tin. - Purification of tin, pickling and hardening of this metal. The manuscripts likewise give processes for the refining of pewter.

Purification of the tin, projected into the mixture which is used to make the asemon (that is to say for the transmutation of the tin into silver).

Test of the purity of pewter.

Tin bleaching. This title is found in manuscript 2327: in the language of the alchemists, the word laundering usually applies to the dyeing of metal transformed into silver, as one of the articles in manuscript 2327 shows.

Copper. - Copper bleaching.

Manufacture of gold colored copper (bronze). Three articles are related to this subject, which greatly preoccupied the alchemists, because it was a first degree of modification in the metal, consisting in dyeing it superficially. The same preparation is exposed several times in the manuscript 2327. One of the processes of the papyrus seems to consist in a gilding obtained by means of an alloy of gold and lead. I will only say that it was spread on the surface of the copper. The piece was passed through the fire several times, until the lead had been destroyed by an oxidation which the gold resisted, as the author takes care to indicate. It is therefore a gilding process without mercury.

Then come the following subjects: pickling of copper objects, softening of copper; copper liniment.

Money and asemon - A number of practical items transcribed in the papyrus relates to money proper: purification of money; stripping of silver objects; docimasia, that is to say, trying money; gilding of silver, coloring of silver (in gold color?) The last subject is also covered in manuscript 2327.

The following relates to thealchemy . Manufacturing the asemon. The word asemon was regarded by scholars of the seventeenth century as representing unmarked silver, that is to say more or less impure, containing lead, copper or tin, in a word such as it usually occurs in the raw state in the smelting of ores. But according to Lepsius, we can bring this word closer to the Egyptian word asem, which expresses electrum, an alloy of gold and silver, which played the role of a pure metal in old Egypt and until the time of the Romans. Anyway, this title, manufacture of asemon, is frequently found in manuscripts; it is common among alchemists to indicate silver or electrum produced by transmutation.

The characteristic title: manufacture of the asemon, reappears about twenty times in the articles of the papyrus, except for a few variants such as manufacture of the melted asemon; making the Egyptian asemon. This shows how important the question was for the authors of the papyrus.

The photographed page that I have contains in particular four of these recipes, which can be compared with those of the manuscripts of the libraries: one takes tin as a starting point; another, copper, and it can be compared to a text from manuscript 2327; another uses orichalcum (brass). Tin, mercury and iron appear in the last. In the first two, a certain dose of asemon is introduced during the operation, made in advance and doubtless intended to act as a ferment. The third recipe comes very close to a process for doubling silver by means of tin given in manuscript 2327, a process taken, says the author of this last manuscript, from a very holy book. Alum and Cappadocian salt appear in both texts, that is to say in the papyrus as in our manuscript.

An even more significant title is this: art of doubling the asemon; which reappears twice; it is still a title of several articles in the manuscripts. We can compare the following: quenching or dyeing the asemon (we read the same title applied to gold in the manuscripts), preparation of the mixture; and the singular title: inexhaustible mass of metal, inserted in the middle of the manufacturing processes of the asemon. Finally, let us mention these: refining (?) of hardened asemon; asemon test; how to mitigate asemon.

Gold. - To this metal relates various articles, the significance of which seems relative to certain industrial practices, such as: coloring of gold; gold making; preparations for gold soldering. This last question is also treated in the manuscripts.

Writing in gold letters. This subject is one of those which most preoccupied the author of the papyrus, because it reappears twelve times. It has no less importance for the authors of the treatises of the manuscripts in the libraries, who also return to it on several occasions. Montfaucon and Fabricius have published several recipes taken from them.

Domicasia of gold; preparation of gold liqueur, gilding.

The following titles relate to transmutation: multiplication of gold, manufacture of gold, subject frequently approached in the manuscripts; tempering (or dyeing) of gold, a question also dealt with in the manuscripts, the art of doubling gold (several recipes): this title is not uncommon in the manuscripts.

This art of doubling gold and multiplying it, by forming alloys based on gold, alloys of which it was thought to then realize the total transmutation by suitable dexterity, analogous to fermentations, this art, I say, constitutes the basis of a multitude of recipes. It is to the doubling of gold that the texts of Manilius and Aeneas of Gaza already relate.

Purple. - In the papyrus the metallic preparations are followed, without transition, by the recipes for dyeing purple; which shows the connection that existed between these two orders of operations, a connection similarly attested by the content of the treatise Physica et mystica , of the pseudo-Democritus, It is not a question here of a simple comparison between the brilliance of the dyeing in purple and that of the dyeing in gold, but of a more intimate comparison, at the same time theoretical and practical. In fact, the manufacture of the purple of Cassius, by means of preparations of gold and tin, seems to have something to do with this assimilation, as well as the coloring of glass purple by preparations of gold. Be that as it may, we find in the papyrus a series of preparations for purple, based on the use of the alkanet and the murex, as in the text of pseudo-Democritus which I published and translated two years ago. Some of these preparations are reproduced in the photograph of a page of this papyrus which I possess.

Miscellaneous minerals. - Finally the papyrus ends with various extracts from the treatise of Dioscorides, attributed by name to their author, extracts relating to arsenic, sandarac, cadmium, gold solder, minium of Sinope, natron, cinnabar and mercury: which shows us that this treatise was therefore used as a manual for metallurgical operations.

It is indeed in the text of Dioscorides, in the works of Pliny and in the Commentaries of these works that we can find today the true meaning of the denominations contained in the papyri; which appear with the same technical meanings in our alchemical manuscripts. The concordance of these various texts is most precious for spinning their true historical character.

Mr. BERTHELOT, Member of the Institute.