The Authentic Processes of the Egyptian Alchemists

The authentic processes of the Egyptian alchemists.

Marcellin Berthelot,
the Scientific Review
October 2, 1886


Nothing could be stranger, for the chemists of our time, than the ideas and pretensions of their predecessors and scientific ancestors, the alchemists. How had these been led to imagine that they really effected the transmutation of metals, and what real operations did they accomplish? For they were not pure dreamers, and it was the slowly accumulated treasure of their observations that served to establish the foundations of modern chemistry. But their language is so obscure, surrounded by such reluctance and such charlatanism, expressed in a symbolism so hidden and so mystical, that it had become, at the end of the Middle Ages, almost indecipherable. It is by going back to the origins that we can hope to understand it, or at least to find the real facts that it was intended to express. The Greek manuscripts of the alchemists of Alexandria and Constantinople carry us back, in fact, to an earlier period and we find there some explanations, especially in what concerns their philosophical doctrines; this is what I have tried to highlight in my book on the Origins ofalchemy . But the practices themselves are much more obscure, and deciphering them requires painstaking work. However, I believe I have achieved new results in this respect, mainly by studying the texts preserved in the Leyden papyri, texts which have just been printed by M. Leemans, and of which I have given a complete French translation, in the September number of the Annales de chimie et de physique (pp. 18 to 40), helping me to comment on them from the works of Theophrastus , Dioscorides and Pliny . on the mineralogy, metallurgy and materia medica of the ancients. These texts throw a whole new light on the question, by showing precisely how the hopes and the alchemical doctrines on the transmutation of the precious metals were born from the practices of the Egyptian goldsmiths to imitate and falsify them. I ask the readers of the Revue Scientifique to let them know about the question, by first explaining to them the origin of the texts in question; then I will summarize the purely magical texts, most closely related to the alchemical texts; they throw a singular light on a whole part of the history of the beliefs of humanity. I will end with the very summary of the purely chemical recipes.
I.
The Leyden papyri, Greek, demotic and hieroglyphic, come mostly from a collection of Egyptian antiquities, brought together at the beginning of the 19th century by the knight of Anastasi, vice-consul of Sweden in Alexandria. In 1828, he ceded this collection to the government of the Netherlands. Many of them have since been published, mainly by Mr. Leemans, on the orders of the Dutch government. I will deal only with the Greek papyri. These form two volumes in-4°, one of 144 pages, the other of 310 pages: this one appeared last year. The Greek text is accompanied by a Latin version, notes and an index, finally by plates representing the facsimile of a few lines or pages of the manuscripts.
Volume I , which appeared in 1843, is devoted to the papyri noted A, B, C, up to U, papyri relating to lawsuits and contracts, except two which describe dreams: these papyri are curious for the study of manners and Egyptian law; but I will not stop there, for lack of competence. I will not stop either in volume II at papyrus Y, which contains only an alphabet, nor at papyrus Z, found at Philae, much later than the others; for it was written in the year 391 of our era, and rolls on quite a foreign subject.
But papyri V, W and X should be studied carefully. In truth, the first two are above all magical and Gnostic. But these three papyri are closely associated with each other, by the place where they were found and even by certain references from papyrus X, purely alchemical, to papyrus V, especially magical. The history of magic and Gnosticism is closely linked to that of the origins ofalchemy : the current texts provide, in this respect, new proofs in support of what we already knew. The last papyrus is especially chemical. I will examine the recipes in more detail, giving the translation if necessary, as far as I have succeeded in making it intelligible.
Papyrus X is all the more precious as it is the oldest manuscript known today, in which it is a question ofalchemy , since it dates back to the end of the 15th century AD.
So that would be one of those old books ofalchemy of the Egyptians on gold and silver, burned by Diocletian around 290, "so that they could not enrich themselves by this art and draw from it the source of wealth which enabled them to revolt against the Romans". — This systematic destruction is attested by the Byzantine chroniclers and by the acts of Saint-Procope [ 1 ]; it conforms to the practice of Roman law for magical books, a practice which led to the destruction of so many scientific works in the Middle Ages. Fortunately, the Leyden papyrus has been removed from it and allows us to compare up to a certain point, and by an absolutely authentic text, the knowledge of the Egyptians of the III rd century with those of the Greco-Egyptian alchemists, whose works have come down to us through much more modern copies. Both are closely linked with the information provided by Dioscorides, Theophrastus and Pliny on the mineralogy and metallurgy of the ancients; which seems to indicate that several of these recipes date back to the beginnings of the Christian era. They are perhaps even much older, because the technical processes are transmitted from age to age. Their comparison with the notions acquired today on Egyptian metals [ 2 ], on the one hand, and with the alchemical descriptions properly speaking, on the other hand, confirms and specifies our preceding inductions, on the passage between these two orders of notions.
The very name of one of the oldest alchemists, Phimenas or [ 3 ], is found both in the Papyrus and in pseudo-Democritus, as that of the author of nearly identical recipes.
Strange destiny of these papyri! These are the notebooks of an artisan forger and a charlatan magician, kept in Thebes, probably in a tomb, or more exactly in a mummy. After having escaped, by chance, the systematic destruction of the Romans, accidents of all kinds for fifteen centuries, and, something more serious perhaps, the interested mutilations of the fellahs who were dealers in antiquities, these papyri today provide us with an unparalleled document for appreciating, at the same time, the industrial processes of the ancients relating to alloys, their psychological state and their very prejudices, relative to the power of man over nature. The almost absolute concordance of these texts with some of those of the Greek alchemists comes, I repeat, to support by authentic proof what we could already induce on the origin of the latter and on the time of their composition. At the same time the precision of some of the recipes common to the two orders of documents, recipes still applicable today and which are found in the Manuel Roret for goldsmiths, opposed to the chimerical claim to make gold, adds a new astonishment to our mind. How can we account for the intellectual and mental state of the men who practiced these fraudulent recipes, intended to deceive others by mere appearances, and who had nevertheless ended up deceiving themselves and believing that they had achieved, with the aid of some mysterious rite, the effective transformation of these alloys similar to gold into real gold? At the same time the precision of some of the recipes common to the two orders of documents, recipes still applicable today and which are found in the Manuel Roret for goldsmiths, opposed to the chimerical claim to make gold, adds a new astonishment to our mind. How can we account for the intellectual and mental state of the men who practiced these fraudulent recipes, intended to deceive others by mere appearances, and who had nevertheless ended up deceiving themselves and believing that they had achieved, with the aid of some mysterious rite, the effective transformation of these alloys similar to gold into real gold? At the same time the precision of some of the recipes common to the two orders of documents, recipes still applicable today and which are found in the Manuel Roret for goldsmiths, opposed to the chimerical claim to make gold, adds a new astonishment to our mind. How can we account for the intellectual and mental state of the men who practiced these fraudulent recipes, intended to deceive others by mere appearances, and who had nevertheless ended up deceiving themselves and believing that they had achieved, with the aid of some mysterious rite, the effective transformation of these alloys similar to gold into real gold? opposed to the chimerical pretension of making gold, adds a new astonishment to our minds. How can we account for the intellectual and mental state of the men who practiced these fraudulent recipes, intended to deceive others by mere appearances, and who had nevertheless ended up deceiving themselves and believing that they had achieved, with the aid of some mysterious rite, the effective transformation of these alloys similar to gold into real gold? opposed to the chimerical pretension of making gold, adds a new astonishment to our minds. How can we account for the intellectual and mental state of the men who practiced these fraudulent recipes, intended to deceive others by mere appearances, and who had nevertheless ended up deceiving themselves and believing that they had achieved, with the aid of some mysterious rite, the effective transformation of these alloys similar to gold into real gold?
II.
Let us carefully describe these three magical and alchemical papyri. Papyrus V is bilingual, Greek and Demotic; it is 3m.60 long, 24 centimeters high; the demotic text occupies 22 columns, each 30 to 35 lines long. The Greek text occupies 17 columns of unequal length.
The beginning and the end are lost. It seems to have been found at Thebes. It was written around the third century , according to the style and form of the writing, as well as from the analogy of its contents with the Gnostic doctrines of Marcus. The Greek text is sloppy, full of repetitions, solecisms, case changes, spelling errors attributable to the mode of local pronunciation, such as for and vice versa; for , for , etc. It contains magic formulas: recipes for philtre, for incantations and divinations, to procure dreams. These formulas are filled with barbaric words or forged at will and analogous to those that we read in Iamblichus ( de Mysteriis Egyptiorum \alpha i \epsilon \epsilon i I \naked oh) and among the Gnostics. Let us only give the following incantation which is not lacking in grandeur:


The gates of heaven are open;
The gates of the earth are open
The road to the sea is or green;
The route of the rivers is open;
My spirit has been heard by all the gods and genies;
My spirit was heard by the spirit of heaven;
My spirit has been heard by the spirit of the earth;
My spirit was heard by the spirit of the sea;
My spirit has been heard by the spirit of the rivers.


This text recalls the refrain of a cuneiform tablet quoted by F. Lenormant, in his work on magic among the Chaldeans:


Spirit of heaven, remember;
Spirit of the earth, remember.


In the current papyrus we find traces of the old Egyptian doctrines, disfigured by the oblivion into which they began to fall. The Jewish names, such as Jao, Sabaoth, Adonai, Abraham, etc., that of Abraxa, the role of the magic ring whose stone bears the figure of the serpent biting its tail, a ring which procures glory, power and wealth, the preponderant role attributed to the number seven, "number of letters of the name of God, according to the harmony of the seven tones", the invocation of the great name of God, the quotation of the four bases and the four winds: all this recalls the Gnostics and especially the followers of Marcus in the III rd century of our era. The engraved stones of the National Library of Paris likewise bear the figure of the serpent Ouroboros, with the seven vowels and various cabalistic signs [ 4 ] of the same order. The name of Jesus appears only once in the papyrus, in the middle of a magic formula and without proper attribution. The papyrus therefore has no Christian ties. On the other hand, the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Hebrews are frequently brought together and placed in parallel in the invocations, which is characteristic. Let us also mention the name of the Parthians, who disappeared before the middle of the 3rd century . century of our era and of which there is no further question: it appears in papyrus V, as well as in one of the writings of the alchemist Zozime. Several authors are quoted in the papyrus: but they belong to the same kind of literature. Some, such as Zminis the Tentyrite, Agathocles and Urbicus are magicians, unknown elsewhere. But Apollo Beches (Horus the Sparrowhawk or Pebechius), Ostanes and Democritus already figure under the same title in Pliny the Elder and they play a major role among the alchemists. fountains are stricken with freezing, the rocks break; that of which the sky is the head, the ether the body, the earth the feet, and which the ocean surrounds”. There is an indication of greater antiquity there.
Three passages deserve special attention for the history of science, they are: the sphere of Democritus, astrological-medical; the secret names given to plants by the sacred scribes, and the alchemical recipes. The mixture of these notions, in the same papyrus, with incantations and magic recipes, is characteristic.
The sphere of Democritus represents the work of one of those iatromathematici of which ancient authors speak: they predicted the outcome of illnesses by astrology. Horapolion (1, 38) quotes this kind of calculations. I have found several similar figures in the alchemical and astrological manuscripts of the National Library. Let us first give the text of Papyrus V.
Democritus sphere, prognosis of life and death. Know under which moon (in which month) the patient went to bed and the name of his birth [ 5 ]. Add the calculation of the moon [ 6 ], and see how many times there are thirty days, take the rest and search in the sphere: if the number falls in the upper part, it will live; if it is in the lower part, it will die.
The sphere is represented here by a table which contains the first thirty numbers (number of days of the month), arranged in three columns and according to a certain order. The upper part contains three times six numbers or eighteen; the lower part contains three times four or twelve.
The word sphere responds to the circular shape that was to be given to the painting, as seen in some manuscripts. There were a large number of similar paintings in Egypt. Thus, in manuscript 2327 of the National Library, devoted to the collection of alchemists, we find on folio 293 (verso) the instrument of Hermes Trismegistus, containing 35 numbers divided into three lines: “We count from the rising of the star of the Dog (Sothi or Sirius), that is to say from Epiphi, July 25, until the day of its setting; we divide the number thus obtained by thirty-six [ 7 ] and we look for the remainder in the table. Some of the numbers represent life, others death, others the danger of the sick. It is a different principle of calculation.
In the Greek manuscript 2419 of the National Library, astrologico-magical and alchemical collection, there are two tables of this kind, closer to the sphere of Democritus, both circular and attributed to the old astrologer Petosiris, who already had authority in the time of Aristophanes.
One of them, dedicated (fol. 32) by Petosiris to King Necepso [ 8 ], consists of a circle represented between two vertical paintings. The tables contain the calculation of the days of the moon; the main circle encloses another smaller circle, divided into four quadrants. Between the two concentric circles are the words grand vie, petite vie, grande mort, petite mort . Top and bottom: average life, average death . These words apply to the probability of life or death of the patient. The numbers from 1 to 29 are distributed in the four quadrants, on an average vertical column forming a diameter.
The other circle of Petosiris (folio 156), also dedicated to the most honored King Necepso, bears on the outside and above: Levant, between the words grand vie, petite vie; bottom: Couchant, between the words grande mort, petite mort; words specified by the inscriptions contained between the two concentric circles:
Hearing loud: "heal immediately - heal in 7 days." Bottom: "Die immediately - die in seven days." »
The numbers from 1 to 30 are distributed along the eighths of circumference and in the middle vertical column.
As for the bases and methods of calculation, it is useless to dwell on them. But it seemed to me of some interest to bring these various tables and circles closer to the sphere of Papyrus V. We see at the same time, by a new proof, how the name of Democritus, in Hellenizing Egypt, had become that of the head of a school of astrologers and magicians, in accordance with the traditions which I have set forth and discussed elsewhere.
The sacred names of the plants give rise to analogous comparisons between the papyrus, the alchemical writings and the work, quite scientific moreover, of Dioscorides, Here is the text of the papyrus (V, col. 12 end and col. 13).
Interpretation drawn from the sacred names, which the sacred scribes used, in order to frustrate the curiosity of the vulgar. The plants and the other things, which they used for the images of the gods, were designated by them in such a way that, if they were not understood, one was doing vain work by following a wrong path. But we have drawn the interpretation of many descriptions and hidden information.
This is followed by 37 names of plants, minerals, etc. : the real names being placed next to the mystical names. These are taken from the blood, semen, tears, bile, excrement and various organs (head, heart, bones, tail, hair, etc.) of Grecian Egyptian gods (Hephaistos, Hermes, Vesta, Sun, Chronos, Hercules, Ammon, Mars); animals (snake, ibis, cynocephalus, pig, crocodile, lion, bull, hawk), and finally man and his various parts (head, eye, shoulder). Semen and blood reappear there especially continually: serpent's blood, blood of Hephaistos, blood of Vesta, blood of the eye, etc. : lion's seed, Hermes' seed, Ammon's seed, ibis bone, doctor's bone, etc., etc. Now this bizarre nomenclature is found in Dioscorides. By describing plants and their uses in its Materia Medica , he gives the synonyms of Greek names in the Latin, Egyptian, Dacian, Gallic, etc. languages, a synonymy which contains valuable information. We see there appear, in addition, the names taken from the works which bore the names of Ostanes, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Petesis, authors also cited by the alchemists and by the Geoponica . . We read there especially the names given by the prophets, that is to say by the priestly scribes of Egypt: I have noted 54 of these names, formed precisely according to the same rules as the sacred names of the papyrus: blood of Mars, of Hercules, of Hermes, of Titan, of man, of ibis, of cat, of crocodile, blood of the eye, seed of Hercules, of Hermes, of cat; eye of Piton; tail of rat, scorpion, ichneumon; fingernail of rat, ibis, tears of Juno, etc.
There still exists in the popular botanical nomenclature more than one plant name of this species: bull's eye, lion's tooth, dog's tongue, etc., which perhaps goes back to these old symbolic denominations [ 9 ] . The word dragon's blood today designates the same drug as in the time of Pliny and Dioscorides. These denominations offered, from the outset, many variants.
Only one name is found both in the papyrus and in Dioscorides, it is that of the Anagallis , designated by the word: blood of the eye.
We see that the nomenclatures of the botanists of that time varied no less than those of our time, even though they proceeded from common symbolic conventions, like those of the Egyptian prophets. Some of these symbolic words passed to the alchemists, but with a different meaning; such are the names: seed of Venus, taken for flower of copper; serpent's bile, taken for mercury; Osiris, taken for lead (or sulphur); black cow's milk, taken for mercury derived from its sulphide. In the papyrus and in Dioscorides we find the same words, but with another meaning. All this contributes to reconstituting the intellectual milieu and the troubled sources where the first chemical theories emerged.
Let us come to the few notions of this science of which papyrus V preserves the trace. They are limited to a one-line ink recipe and a process for refining the gold.
The process for refining gold is not without interest; it is quoted in a preparation on the coloring of gold, given in the alchemical papyrus X, which tends to establish the connection of the two papyri. Secondly, it is transcribed between a formula for asking for a dream and the description of a magic ring which gives happiness; which clearly shows the intellectual environment of the time: the same people practiced magic and chemistry. Finally, this process contains an interesting recipe by its similarity with a process given in Pliny and by the resemblance of one and the other with the method known under the name of royal cement, by which one once separated gold and silver.
Here are the words of Pliny (Rist. nat., XXXIII, 25).
The gold is roasted in an earthen vessel with twice its weight of salt and three times its weight of misy, then the operation is repeated with 2 parts of salt and 1 part of the stone called schist. In this way, it gives active properties to substances heated with it, while remaining pure and intact. The residue is an ash that is kept in an earthen vessel.
Pliny adds that this residue is used as a remedy. In fact, it must have contained metals foreign to gold, in the form of chloride or oxychloride. Did it also contain a gold salt? Strictly speaking, it could be that sodium chloride, in the presence of basic salts of iron peroxide, or even of copper dioxide, gave off chlorine capable of attacking metallic or alloyed gold, forming gold chloride. But the thing is not demonstrated. In any case, the gold is refined in the preceding operation.
This is in fact what is shown by the comparison of this text with the description of the start by cementation , exposed by Macquer ( Dictionary of chemistry , 1778). This is the very difficult problem of separating gold from silver by the dry process. It is easily reached today by the wet route, which dates back to the 17th century .century. But she was not known before. Here is the description given by Macquer of royal cement, formerly used in the manufacture of coins. We take 4 parts of crushed and sifted bricks, 1 part of green vitriol, calcined with red, 1 part of common salt; it is made into a firm paste which is moistened with water or urine. It is stratified with thin blades of gold in an earthen pot; the lid is lute and heated over a moderate fire for twenty-four hours, taking care to melt the gold. The operation is repeated if necessary. By proceeding in this way, the silver and the other metals dissolve in the sodium chloride, with the assistance of the oxidizing and, consequently, chlorinating action, exerted by the iron oxide derived from vitriol, while the gold remains unattacked. This process was even employed, according to Macquer,
It is easy to recognize the similarity of this process with Pliny's recipe and that of the Egyptian papyrus.
Papyrus W specifically sheds light on the relationship between magic and Jewish Gnosticism. It is made up of 7 and a half sheets, 0.27m high, 0.32m wide. It contains 25 pages of text in uncial letters, some cursive, each of 52 to 31 lines, sometimes less. It dates back to the third century and is very closely related to the doctrines of Marcus and the Carpocratians. It is drawn chiefly from the apocryphal works of Moses written at that time; he cites, among these works, the Monad , the Secret Book , the Key , the Book of the Archangels , the Lunar Book , perhaps also a Book on the Law , the Vth Book of the Ptolemaics , the book Panaretos : these given without an author's name. All these works are congeneric and probably contemporaneous with the Domestic Chemistry of Moise , of which I have found extensive fragments in the Greek alchemists: it is the same family of apocrypha. The very title stated in the first line of the papyrus, "sacred book called Monas, the eighth of Moses, on the holy name", is entirely in conformity with the doctrines of the Carpocratian Gnostics, for whom Monas was the great god ignored. The great name or the holy name possesses magical virtues; it makes invisible, it attracts woman to man, it drives out the demon, it heals convulsions, it stops snakes, it calms the anger of kings, etc. The number seven plays here, as in all this literature, a preponderant role: it is subordinate to that of the divine planets, to each of which is dedicated a plant and a special perfume.
Without dwelling on formulas of incantation and conjuration, stuffed with barbarous words, we can note, from the point of view of historical analogies, the mention of the serpent biting its tail and that of the seven vowels surrounding the figure of the crocodile with the head of a hawk, on which stands the polymorphic God. Here again is a figure quite similar to those which are traced on the engraved stones of the National Library. Let us also quote the mention of the Agathodemon or divine serpent: “the sky is your head, the ether your body, the earth your feet and the water surrounds you; you are the ocean which engenders all good and nourishes the inhabited earth”, I note there, in passing, a few words taken in an unusual sense: such is the “nitre tetragonal” (p. 85), on which one must write drawings and complicated formulas. It was certainly not our saltpetre, nor our carbonate of soda, which would hardly lend itself to such operations. The sulphate of soda would perhaps furnish sufficient films; but it is more probable that it is a question here of an insoluble salt, sufficiently hard, such as carbonate of lime (limestone spar), or sulphate of lime, perhaps feldspar, because it is a question further on of licking and washing two of its faces (Papyri, t. II, p. 91); there is an enigma here. On this nitre, one writes with an ink made of the seven flowers and the seven spices (Papyri, t. II, p. 90, 99). A sacred "stele" must be painted there containing the following invocation: The sulphate of soda would perhaps furnish sufficient films; but it is more probable that it is a question here of an insoluble salt, sufficiently hard, such as carbonate of lime (limestone spar), or sulphate of lime, perhaps feldspar, because it is a question further on of licking and washing two of its faces (Papyri, t. II, p. 91); there is an enigma here. On this nitre, one writes with an ink made of the seven flowers and the seven spices (Papyri, t. II, p. 90, 99). A sacred "stele" must be painted there containing the following invocation: The sulphate of soda would perhaps furnish sufficient films; but it is more probable that it is a question here of an insoluble salt, sufficiently hard, such as carbonate of lime (limestone spar), or sulphate of lime, perhaps feldspar, because it is a question further on of licking and washing two of its faces (Papyri, t. II, p. 91); there is an enigma here. On this nitre, one writes with an ink made of the seven flowers and the seven spices (Papyri, t. II, p. 90, 99). A sacred "stele" must be painted there containing the following invocation: one writes with an ink made of the seven flowers and the seven spices (Papyri, t. II, p. 90, 99). A sacred "stele" must be painted there containing the following invocation: one writes with an ink made of the seven flowers and the seven spices (Papyri, t. II, p. 90, 99). A sacred "stele" must be painted there containing the following invocation:
I invoke you, you, the most powerful of the gods, who created everything; you, born of yourself, who sees everything, without being able to be seen. You gave glory and power to the sun. When you appeared, the world existed and light appeared. Everything is subject to you, but none of the gods can see your form, because you transform yourself in all..... I invoke you under the name that you possess in the language of the birds, in that of the hieroglyphs, in that of the Jews, in that of the Egyptians, in that of the cynocephali... in that of the hawks, in the hieratic language...
These various mystical languages ​​reappear a little later, after an invocation to Hermes and at the head of a Gnostic account of creation, which I reproduce with abridgement, in order to give a more complete idea of ​​this kind of literature which has had such a considerable historical role.
The God of nine forms greets you in hieratic language .... and adds: I precede you, Lord. So saying, he clapped three times. God laughs: cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha (seven times), and God having laughed, the seven gods were born who understand the world; for they are the ones who appeared first. When he had burst out laughing, the light appeared and illumined everything; for the God was born on the world and on fire. Bessun, berithen, berio.
He burst out laughing for the second time. Everything was water. The earth, having heard the sound, cried out, bowed, and the water was divided into three. The God appeared, he who is proposed to the abyss; without it water can neither increase nor decrease.
At God's third burst of laughter appears Hermes. On the fifth, fate holding scales and depicting justice. Its name means the boat of the celestial revolution: another reminiscence of old Egyptian mythology. Then comes the quarrel between Hermes and fate, each claiming justice for himself. At the seventh laugh, the soul is born, then the Python snake that foresees everything.
I have quoted, in short, all this Gnostic travesty of the biblical account of the seven days of creation, in order to show its great resemblance to the Pis lily Sophia and congeneric texts, and to highlight the environment in which the first alchemists lived and thought.
III.
We are now going to examine Papyrus X, especially the chemical one: it testifies to a very subtle and very advanced science of metallic alloys and colorings, a science whose aim was the manufacture and falsification of gold and silver materials: in this respect, it opens new days on the origin of the idea of ​​the transmutation of metals. Not only is the idea analogous; but the practices expounded in this papyrus are the same, as I will establish, as those of the older alchemists, such as Pseudo-Democritus. This demonstration is of the utmost importance for the study of the origins of thealchemy . It establishes in fact that these origins are not founded on purely chimerical imaginations, as has sometimes been believed; but they were based on positive practices and real experiments, by means of which imitations of gold and silver were made. Sometimes the manufacturer confined himself to misleading the public, without having any illusions about his processes: this is the case of the author of the papyrus recipes. Sometimes, on the contrary, he added to his art the use of magic formulas or prayers, and he became the dupe of his own industry.
The definitions of the word “gold” in the Greek alchemical lexicon, which is part of the old manuscripts, are very characteristic: they are three in number: And this: gold, "is pyrite, and cadmium and sulphur." Or again, gold, "these are all the fragments and lamellae yellowed and divided and brought to perfection". We see that the word "gold" for the alchemists, as for the goldsmiths of the Leyden papyri, and I would even add, in certain respects, for the goldsmiths and painters of today, had a complex meaning: it served to express first real gold, then low-grade gold, alloys with a golden hue, any golden object on the surface, any golden colored material, natural or artificial. A certain analogous confusion reigns even today, in current language; but it does not reach the bottom of the ideas, as it did formerly. This extension of the meaning of words was indeed common among the ancients; the name of the emerald and that of the sapphire, for example, were applied by the Egyptians to the most diverse precious stones and vitrifications [10 ]. Just as emerald and natural sapphire were imitated, gold and silver were imitated. Because of the very confused notions then held on the constitution of matter, people thought they could go further and imagined they could achieve it by mysterious artifices. But, to reach the goal, it was necessary to implement the slow actions of nature and those of a supernatural power.
“Learn, O friend of the Muses, says Olympiodorus, alchemical author of the beginning of the fifth century of our era, learn what the word economy means [ 11 ] and will not believe, as some do, that manual action alone is sufficient: no, it still requires that of nature, and an action superior to man. And elsewhere: "So that the composition is carried out exactly, ask by your prayers to God to teach you," says Zozime; for men do not transmit knowledge; they are jealous of each other, and the way is not found.... The demon Ophiuchus hinders our search, crawling in all directions and bringing sometimes negligence, sometimes fear, sometimes the unexpected, at other times afflictions and chastisements, in order to make us abandon the work. Hence the necessity of bringing in prayers and magic formulas, either to ward off enemy demons, or to conciliate the divinity.
Such was the scientific and moral environment within which beliefs in the transmutation of metals developed: it is important to remember this. But it is of the greatest interest, in my opinion, to note what were the real practices, the positive manipulations of the operators. Now these practices are revealed to us by the Leiden papyrus, in the clearest form, and in agreement with the recipes of pseudo-Democritus and Olympiodorus. It is therefore necessary to study in detail the recipes of the papyrus, which contains the first form of all these processes. and doctrines. In pseudo-Democritus, and still more in Zosimus, they are already complicated by mystical imaginations; then came the commentators who amplified more and more the mystical part, obscuring or eliminating the practical part, to whose exact knowledge they were often strangers. The oldest texts, as often happens, are the clearest here.
Papyrus X was also found in Thebes, probably with the two previous ones because recipe 15 refers to the gold refining process, cited in papyrus V. It is made up of ten large sheets, 0.30 m high, 0.34 m wide, folded in half widthwise. It contains sixteen pages of writing from twenty-eight to forty-seven lines, in capital letters from the end of the third century. It contains seventy-five formulas of metallurgy, intended to compose alloys, for the manufacture of cups, vases, images and other goldsmith's objects; welding or superficially coloring metals; to try its purity, etc., formulas arranged without order and with many repetitions. There are also fifteen formulas for making letters of gold or silver, a subject connected with the preceding. The whole looks singularly like the workbook of a goldsmith, working sometimes on alloyed or falsified metals. These texts are full of idioms, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors: this is indeed the practical language of a craftsman. They also offer the stamp of great sincerity, without a shadow of charlatanism, despite the professional improbity of the recipes. Then come eleven recipes for dyeing fabrics in purple or glaucous color. The papyrus ends with ten articles taken from the materia medica of Dioscorides, relating to the minerals used in the previous recipes. They also offer the stamp of great sincerity, without a shadow of charlatanism, despite the professional improbity of the recipes. Then come eleven recipes for dyeing fabrics in purple or glaucous color. The papyrus ends with ten articles taken from the materia medica of Dioscorides, relating to the minerals used in the previous recipes. They also offer the stamp of great sincerity, without a shadow of charlatanism, despite the professional improbity of the recipes. Then come eleven recipes for dyeing fabrics in purple or glaucous color. The papyrus ends with ten articles taken from the materia medica of Dioscorides, relating to the minerals used in the previous recipes.
We see by this enumeration that the same operator practiced goldsmithing and the dyeing of precious fabrics. But it seems foreign to the manufacture of enamels, vitrifications, artificial precious stones. At least no mention is made of it in these recipes, although this subject is treated at length in the writings of the alchemists. Papyrus X, moreover, deals only with goldsmith's objects made with precious metals; weapons, tools and other large utensils, as well as the corresponding alloys are not listed here.
Recipes relating to metals are listed in no order one after the other. Let us first look for the general characteristics.
By examining them more closely, we recognize that they have been drawn from various works or traditions. Indeed, the units to which these compositions relate . Metallics are different, yet special for each recipe. The writer sometimes speaks of precise measurements, such as mines, staters, drachmas, etc. (the word drachma or the word stater being used in preference); sometimes he uses the word party; sometimes finally from the word measure.
Metal dyeing is designated by several distinct words and sometimes represents the manufacture of an alloy, colored in its entire mass, sometimes a gilding or a superficial silvering, sometimes coloring by coatings or varnish containing neither gold nor silver.
We are dealing, I repeat, with several collections of recipes from various dates and origins, placed end to end.
The recipes themselves offer great diversity in the way they are written: some are meticulous descriptions of certain operations: mixing and stripping, successive melting, with the use of various fluxes. In others, only the proportions of the primitive metals appear with the summary statement of operations, the fluxes themselves being omitted. For example, we read: lead and tin are purified by pitch and bitumen; they are made solid by alum, Cappadocian salt and magnesia stone thrown on the surface. In some recipes, only the proportions of the ingredients are indicated, or even of only a few, without any mention of the operations.
This is very much like the notes of practitioners, intended to preserve only the memory of an essential point, the rest being entrusted to memory.
The final recipes: Egyptian asèm , according to Phimenas the Saïte, the same as Pammenes, alleged tutor of Democritus among the Greek alchemists; sulfur water, dilution of asem, etc., have, on the contrary, a character of special complication which recalls the allchemists; as well as the planetary signs of gold and silver, inscribed in the last recipe which contains the oldest known example of this symbolic notation.
The papyrus contains eleven recipes for dyeing in purple, on which I will not dwell; ten articles taken from the materia medica of Dioscorides, a contemporary author of the Christian era, and ninety articles relating to metals, which are the most original part of the manuscript.
A special mention is due first of all to the substance called sulfur water or divine water, a substance which has an enormous role among alchemists, who continually play on the double meaning of this word. This liquor is designated in the alchemical lexicon under the name of serpent's bile , a name which is attributed there to Petesis, the only author cited in this lexicon and who also appears in Dioscorides. He is therefore one of the authors of this singular prophetic nomenclature of which I have already spoken. Petesis, as well as Phimenas or Pammenes, an author cited both in the papyrus and in the pseudo-Democritus, represent two real characters, two of those prophets or chemist priests who founded our science. Sulfur water first appears in Papyrus X.
Here is the translation of the text:
lnvention of sulfur water. Take a handful of lime and as much sulfur in fine powder; place them in a vase, have strong vinegar or the urine of a prepubescent child: heat from below, until the supernatant liquor appears like blood, decant it properly to separate it from the deposit, and use.
This recipe is very clear: it designates the preparation of a calcium polysulphide. In the following recipe, which is very complicated, the above liqueur is used.
This liquor prepared with native sulfur is found in various passages of the alchemists, for example in the small summary of Zozime entitled: Authentic writing . Let us also recall here that the descriptions of Zozime refer in various places to liquors charged with hydrogen sulphide.
Such sulfur water possesses a remarkable activity, especially with respect to metals, an activity which must have struck its inventors deeply. Not only does it give precipitates or products colored black, yellow, red, etc., with metallic salts and oxides, but the alkaline polysulphides exercise a solvent action on most of the metallic sulphides; they directly color the surface of metals with special tints; finally, they can even, by a dry process, dissolve gold.
Recipes relating to metals are the most numerous and the most interesting. First of all, they show the correlation between the profession of the goldsmith, who worked precious metals, and that of the hierogrammatist or sacred scribe, obliged to trace on marble and stone monuments. as well as on papyrus or parchment books, gold and silver characters: the recipes given for gilding jewelry in papyrus are the same as for writing in gold letters.
Indeed, the art of writing in gold or silver letters was of great concern to the craftsmen who used our papyrus; there are no less than fifteen or sixteen formulas on this subject, also treated on several occasions in the manuscripts of our libraries; Montfaucon and Fabricius published several recipes, taken from the latter.
One operated with gold in sheets, with its amalgam, with various alloys, finally with yellow materials exempt from gold.
Some of these recipes, through a singular transition, have become recipes for true transmutation.
Let's come to the formulas relating to the manipulation of metals. They bear the trace of a common concern: that of a goldsmith, preparing metals and alloys for the objects of his trade, and pursuing a dual goal. On the one hand, he sought to give them the appearance of gold and silver, either by a superficial dyeing, or by the manufacture of mixtures containing neither gold nor silver, but likely to deceive unskilled people and even experienced workmen; as he expressly says. On the other hand, it aimed to increase the weight of gold and silver by introducing foreign metals, without changing their appearance (diplosis). These are all operations that goldsmiths still engage in today; but the State imposed on them the use of special marks, intended to define the real title of jewels tested in official laboratories, and he carefully separated the trade in fakes, that is to say imitations, as well as that of doubled, from the trade in authentic metals. Despite all these precautions, the public is continually disappointed, because he does not know and cannot know enough about the marks and the means of control.
There are special temptations here: professional fraud does not always seem, in the minds of people in the profession, to come under the rules of common probity. The price of gold is so high, the benefits resulting from its substitution by another metal are so great, that even today there is an incessant pressure exerted on the part of goldsmiths in this direction, pressure which the public authorities have difficulty in resisting. Its purpose is either to lower the title of the gold alloys used in goldsmithery, while tending them as pure gold; or to sell at the price of the total weight, estimated as gold, the jewels containing enamels or pieces of iron or other metals; even in our time, this is a commercial tradition which we have not succeeded in prohibiting. Already it was said in the last century, at the time of trades organized by corporations: “It seems that the art of deceiving has its principles and its rules; it is a tradition that the master teaches his apprentice, which the whole body keeps as an important secret. Here, as in many other industries, there is a perpetual tendency to operate substitutions and alterations of material, very lucrative for the merchant and carried out in such a way that the public does not notice it, without however putting themselves in flagrant contradiction with the text of the laws and regulations. Beyond that begins crime and it is not uncommon for the limit to be crossed.
But these laws and regulations, this rigorous separation between the industry of forgery, doubled, plated, imitations, and the industry of real gold and real silver, these legal marks, these precise means of analysis that we have today did not exist in the time of the ancients. The Leiden papyrus is dedicated to developing the processes by which goldsmiths of that time imitated precious metals and deceived the public. The manufacture of the double and that of the filled jewels do not, however, appear in these recipes, although we find traces of it in Pliny [ 12]. The recipes here are of a purely chemical nature, that is to say that the intention of fraud is less obvious. From there, however, to the idea that it was possible to make the imitation so perfect that it became identical to reality, there was only one step. It is the one that was crossed by the alchemists.
Transmutation was all the easier to conceive in the ideas of the time as pure metals, endowed with definite characteristics, were not then distinguished from their alloys: both bore specific names, regarded as equivalent. Such is the case of brass (æs), a complex and variable alloy assimilated to pure copper, which was often referred to by the same name. Our word bronze reproduces the same complexity; but it is no longer a definite metal for us. The word copper itself often applies to yellow or white alloys, in common parlance. Likewise the orichalcum, which has become, after several variations, our brass [ 13]. Corinthian brass, an alloy containing gold, copper and silver, was not unlike the fourth grade of gold, used today in jewelry. The monetary alloy, for current coins, was also a clean metal, just like our billon today; the planet Mars is attributed to him in the same way as the other planets with simple metals, in the old list of Celsus. Claudianon and molybdochalcum, poorly known alloys of copper and lead, often cited by alchemists and which were not without analogy with tinsel and certain artistic brasses or bronzes, according to various passages of Zozime, have disappeared in the midst of the numerous alloys which we now know how to form between copper, zinc, lead, tin, antimony and other metals. The pseudargyre of Strabo is an alloy which has not left any other historical trace either, perhaps it contained nickel. Pliny's stannum was an alloy analogous to claudianon, sometimes containing silver, and whose name came to be identified with that of white lead, another alloy varying from compounds of lead and silver, produced during the processing of lead ores, to pure tin, which it came to mean exclusively.
From the point of view of imitation or reproduction of gold and silver, the most important alloy was asem, sometimes identified with electrum, an alloy of gold and silver found in nature; but the meaning of the word asem is more comprehensive. Papyrus X offers a great deal of interest in this respect, because of the multiplied formulas of asèrn which it contains. it is on the manufacture of asem, in fact, that the imitation of gold and silver revolves above all; according to the recipes of the papyrus: it is also its manufacture and that of molybdochalcum, which are the starting point of the processes of transmutation of the alchemists. All this history draws a singular light from the texts of the papyrus, which clearly specify what it was already permitted to induce in this respect [ 14 ].
We find there first recipes for the surface dyeing of metals, such as gilding and silvering, intended to give the illusion of real gold and silver, and assimilated either to writing in letters of gold and silver, or to dyeing purple, the recipes of which follow. Sometimes we proceeded by adding a liniment or a varnish; sometimes, on the contrary, removing metals other than gold from the surface of the jewel, by cementation which left the compound nucleus in an invisible state.
There are also recipes intended to accomplish a deeper imitation: for example, by combining the real metal, gold or silver, with a more or less considerable dose of less precious metals: this was the operation of diplosis, which is still practiced today . But the Egyptian goldsmith believed or pretended to make believe that the true metal was really multiplied by an operation comparable to fermentation; two texts from the papyrus ( inexhaustible mass , etc.) show this clearly. This is, moreover, the very notion of the first alchemists, clearly exposed in Aeneas of Gaza and in Zozima.
Finally, the falsification is sometimes complete, the alloy not containing any trace of initial gold or silver. This is how the alchemists hoped to achieve complete transmutation.
In these various operations, mercury plays an essential role, a role that has persisted to the present day, when it has been replaced for gilding by electrical processes. Arsenic, sulfur and their compounds also appear as dyeing agents: which completes the assimilation of the recipes of the papyrus with those of the alchemists.
Let us first mention a few procedures which clearly show the intention to defraud.
To coat the gold, in other words to purify the gold and make it shiny. Misy [ 15 ], 4 parts; lamellar alum, 4 parts, salt, 4 parts; grind with water, having coated the gold, place it in an earthen vessel, placed in a furnace, and lute with clay, until the aforesaid materials have been consumed [16 ] ; remove everything and clean carefully.
This recipe is almost that of royal cement, by means of which gold was separated from silver and other metals. Used as above, it has the effect of making pure gold appear on the surface of the golden object: the center remaining allied with the other metals. It is therefore a process of fraud. But it could also be used to polish gold.
Here are now some real gilding processes. One of them is remarkable, because it proceeds without mercury and perhaps represents a practice prior to the knowledge of this metal, of which there is no question until the 5th century BC .
To give copper objects the appearance of gold, so that neither contact nor friction on the touchstone reveals it, but that it can be used above all for the manufacture of a ring of beautiful appearance; here is the preparation. Or grind gold and lead into a fine powder like flour, 2 parts lead to 1 part gold; then, after mixing, it is incorporated with gum; the ring is coated with this mixture: then it is heated. This is repeated several times, until the object has taken on the color. Fraud is difficult to detect, because rubbing makes the mark of a gold object, and heat consumes the lead, but not the gold.
It is always a device to deceive the buyer.
Another process is intended to gild silver by application with gold leaf and mercury. The author adds: “the object used as a golden vase can stand the test of regular gold”; which shows that it is still a touchstone-proof forgery.
Other recipes only give the appearance of gold.
Another recipe for gilding silver is based on the use of sandarac (i.e. realgar), cinnabar and misy (copper sulphate and basic iron). She thus observes the appearance of arsenical compounds to dye gold. But these compounds seem to be employed here only by application, without the intervention of chemical reactions, such as those which, on the contrary, form the basis of the methods of transmutation by arsenic among the alchemists.
A process for gilding silver, in which only cinnabar, alum and white vinegar appear, represents a preliminary coating.
A superficial gilding appearance is based on the use of roasted misy, alum and celandine, with the addition of urine.
These processes of superficial dyeing deserve all the more attention as they became a process of transmutation in the pseudo-Democritus, the oldest alchemist author who has come down to us ( Physica and Mystica ):
Make the cinnabar [ 17 ] white by means of oil, or vinegar, or honey, or brine, or alum; then yellow by means of misy, or sory, or blotches, or apyre sulphur, or as you like. Throw the mixture on silver and you will obtain gold, if you have dyed it in gold; if it is copper, you will have electrum. Because nature enjoys nature.
This recipe is reproduced with more details, a little further, in the same author.
Elsewhere the pseudo-Democritus gives a process based on the use of saffron and celandine to color the surface of silver or copper and dye it gold: which conforms to the recipes for writing in gold letters which I mentioned above.
Such processes recall, in certain respects, the following varnish: to give a golden color to any metal ( Manuel Roret , t, II, p. 192,1832): dragon's blood, sulfur and water, boil, filter; we put this water in a matrass with the metal we want to color. We mouth, we boil, we distill. The residue is a yellow color that tints metals gold.
One can also operate, according to the same Manual, with equal parts of aloe, saltpeter, and sulphate of copper.
Celandine also appears associated with orpiment in one of the papyrus recipes for writing in gold letters on paper, parchment, or marble. This is followed by a process of gilding by varnishing, based on the simultaneous use of arsenical compounds and mercury.
Gilding having the same effect. Lamellar arsenic (orpiment), rosacea, golden sandarac, gum arabic, mercury, inner part of arum in equal parts: dilute the whole with goat's bile: it is applied to copper objects passed through the fire, to silver objects, to figures (of metal) and small shields: the brass must be well polished.
The next process of the papyrus is a process of gilding with mercury, but with intention of fraud, it seems.
To gild silver in a sustainable manner. Take mercury and gold leaf, mold it into the consistency of wax, and taking the silver vessel, etch it with alum. And, taking a little of the waxy mixture, coat it with the polisher: let the material set. Do this five times, hold the vase with a very clean cloth, so that it does not get dirty; and, taking embers, prepare ashes, rub with the polisher and use as a golden vessel. It can stand the test of regular gold.
The following processes are silvering processes, all based on an apparent coloring, operated without silver. Thus, under the name of copper coating, we teach to whiten copper by rubbing it with mercury; it is still today a device to make copper money look like silver and to fool inattentive people.
Instead of dyeing the surface of metals to give them the appearance of gold or silver, Egyptian goldsmiths learned early to dye them thoroughly, that is, by modifying them throughout their mass. The processes employed by them consisted in preparing alloys of gold and silver, preserving the appearance of the metal: this is what they called diplosis . , the art of doubling the weight of gold and silver, an expression which passed to the alchemists, at the same time as the claim to obtain in this way metals not simply mixed, but thoroughly transformed. Indeed, this word implied sometimes the simple increase in weight of the precious metal, added to a metal of lesser value which did not change its appearance; sometimes the fabrication of all parts of gold and silver, by the natural transmutation of the superadded metal, all metals being basically identical, in conformity with the Platonic theories on the raw material. The very agent of transformation is a portion. of the previous alloy, playing the role of ferment: we meet, in fact, two recipes of this order.
Let's start with the diplosis recipes , which highlight the process. They are interesting because they show the true filiation of alchemical ideas and processes.
Double the weight of gold . To increase the weight of gold, melt it with a quarter of its cadmium weight [ 18 ] and it will become heavier and harder.
It was obviously necessary to add a reducing agent and a fondant, which the recipe does not mention. One thus obtained an alloy of gold with the metals whose oxides constituted cadmium, that is to say especially zinc, copper or lead; gold-rich alloy. The same recipe can also be read in the pseudo-Democritus, but, as always, more complicated and more obscure than in the papyrus.
The following process is clearer:
Gold is altered by increasing the weight with misy [ 19 ] and Sinope earth [ 20 ]. We throw it in equal parts into the furnace, and when it has become clear at the bottom of the crucible, we add of each of these ingredients what is appropriate, and the gold is doubled.
Likewise :
Increase in gold (col. 3.1. 7). To increase the gold, take the cadmium of Thrace, make the mixture with the cadmium in crusts or with that of Gaul.
Then comes a second title “gold fraud”, probably originally written in the margin and which the copyist introduced into the text, which moreover follows on from the previous one and completes the recipe.
Misy and Rubric of Sinope, equal parts for one part gold. After the gold has been thrown into the furnace and it has taken on a beautiful hue, throw in these two ingredients: then remove, let cool and the gold is doubled.
It is still a process to make an alloy of gold, with copper and lead.
Here is another (col, 8, 1. 13), in which copper and asem, an already complex alloy, compete.
Asem, the stater; Cyprus copper, 3 staters; 4 gold staters. Melt together.
It is a simple preparation of low-grade gold.
All these preparations are as clear and positive as our current recipes, except for the uncertainty about the meaning of a few words. It is all the more surprising to see the birth, in the midst of such precise technical processes, of the chimera of a veritable transmutation; it is, moreover, correlative with the intention of falsifying metals. The forger, by dint of deceiving the public, ended by believing in the reality of his work; he believed in it, as well as the dupe he had at first proposed to make. Indeed, the relationship of these recipes with those of the alchemists can now be completely established.
I have already pointed out in this respect the identity of some recipes for gilding with the recipes for transmutation of pseudo-Democritus; I will continue this demonstration later by talking about asem. It is striking for the diplosis of Moses, a recipe as brief, as clear as that of the Leiden papyri and probably taken from the same sources, at least if we judge by the role of Moses in these same papyri.
The process of Moses, exposed in a few lines in the alchemical manuscript of Venice, is this [ 21 ]:
Take copper, arsenic (orpiment), sulfur and lead, the mixture is ground with horseradish oil; it is roasted over coals until desulfurization; we withdraw; one takes of this burnt copper 1 part and 3 parts of gold; put in a crucible; we heat; and you will find it all changed to gold, with the help of God.
The formula of Eugenius, which follows in the Venetian manuscript, is a little more complex than that of Moses, but very analogous.
It is also based on the use of burnt copper, mixed with gold and melted, to which orpiment is added: this compound, treated with vinegar, is exposed to the sun for two days, then it is dried; it is added to silver, which makes it similar to electrum; the whole, added to the gold in equal parts, consumes the operation.
It is a low-grade gold alloy, analogous to the mixtures mentioned above.
It is therefore always the same kind of alloys that the author finally claims to identify with pure gold.
Let us also observe that the beginning of these formulas hardly differs from the following one of the papyrus.
Copper bleaching . To whiten the copper, in order to mix it with the asèm in equal parts without being able to recognize it. Taking copper from Cyprus, melt it, throw in a mine of decomposed sandarac (roasted 1), 2 drachmas of iron-colored sandarac, 5 drachmas of alum, the best, and melt. In the second cast, 4 drachmas of Pont wax or less are added; we heat and we break.
This also recalls the preparation of burnt copper from Dioscorides. The silver solders of the goldsmiths of our time are still executed by means of arsenical compounds. We read in the Manuel Roret (t. II, p. 186, 1832):
3 parts of silver, 1 part of brass: melt; throw in a little powdered orpiment. — Other: fine silver, 1 ounce; thin brass, 1 ounce; arsenic, 1 oz. First, the silver and the brass are melted and the arsenic is added. — Other: silver, 4 ounces; brass, 3 ounces; arsenic, 2 large. — Other: silver, 2 ounces; foil, 1 ounce; arsenic, 4 large; sink away; good welding.
It will be noted that the very statement of these formulas nowadays takes on a form analogous to that of the formulas of the papyrus. It is moreover by a similar recipe that one prepares today the white tombac or white copper.
In any case, in the papyrus, the copper is dyed with arsenic as with the alchemists, all with the avowed intention of falsification.
The crux of the question of transmutation is in the manufacture of asèm.
The asèm [ 22 ] of the Egyptians originally designated electrum, an alloy of gold and silver which is found in nature and which is easily produced in the processing of ores. It was regarded as a distinct metal, comparable to gold and silver; he is figured next to them on Egyptian monuments. It was also placed under the patronage of a planetary deity, Jupiter, who later was attributed to tin, when electrum disappeared from the list of metals, around the 5th or 6th century . century of our era. The very name of asem was translated into Greek as asemon, unbranded metal, which later took on the meaning of money. However, this so-called metal varied notably in its properties, according to the relative doses of gold and silver; but the thing seemed no more surprising then than the variation in the properties of brass, a name which included both our red copper, and the bronzes and brasses of to-day. This is not all: the asèm enjoyed a strange faculty; according to the treatments undergone, it could furnish pure gold, or pure silver, that is to say, be changed in appearance into these two other metals.
Finally and vice versa, it could be made artificially, by combining gold and silver together, or even without gold, and with an association of other metals, such as copper, tin, lead, arsenic, mercury, which varied its color and various properties. It was therefore both a natural metal and a fake metal. It established the transition of gold and silver between themselves and with other metals, and seemed to furnish proof of the reciprocal transmutation of all these substances, simple metals and alloys. Besides, we knew how to extract from it, in a large number of cases, gold and silver, at least by a quantitative analysis, and we succeeded in doing so even in circumstances such as the treatment of argentiferous lead, where it did not seem that we had introduced the silver in advance into the mixtures.
The Leiden papyrus contains 28 to 30 asem formulas, comprising 12 distinct alloys, namely:
An alloy of tin and silver; a tin amalgam; refined tin; an alloy of lead and silver; an alloy of tin and copper; a similar alloy with the addition of anterior asern; an alloy of silver, tin and copper; an amalgam of copper and tin; an amalgam of copper, tin and asèm, an alloy of lead, copper, zinc and tin; an alloy of lead, copper and asem; finally an alloy of asem and arsenical brass. Most of these recipes are found in pseudo-Democritus and in the old Greek alchemists: they are not chimerical, but similar to those of goldsmiths and metallurgists today.
Such are the facts and the appearances which served as bases for the practices, the conceptions and the beliefs of the goldsmiths of the Leyden papyri, like those of the Greco-Egyptian alchemists of our manuscripts. We see from this that, given the state of knowledge at the time, these conceptions and these beliefs did not have the chimerical character that they have taken on for us, now that the simple metals are definitively distinguished, both in relation to each other and in relation to their alloys. The only surprising thing is the question of fact, namely that the practitioners believed for so long in the reality of a complete transmutation, when they only made alloys having the appearance of gold and silver, alloys of which we now have, thanks to the Leyden papyri, the precise formulas, Now these formulas are the same as those of the alchemical manuscripts. In fact, these were instruments of fraud and illusion vis-a-vis the ignorant public. But how could people in the trade have believed for so long that they could really, by craftsmanship or by magic formulas, succeed in changing these appearances into reality? There is an intellectual state there that confuses us.
Marcellin Berthelot

Ratings
[ 1 ] See my book, Origins of Alchemy, p. 72, 1885.
[ 2 ] Origins of Alchemy, p. 211.
[ 3 ] Pammenes
[ 4 ] Origins of Alchemy, p. 34 and 62.
[ 5 ] The name given on the day of birth, in order to calculate the number represented by the letters of this name.
[ 6 ] That is, add the number of the day of the month when he lay in bed to the number represented by the name of the patient.
[ 7 ] This number recalls the 36 decans which include the 360 ​​days of the year.
[ 8 ] These two names are associated alike in Pliny the Elder, Hist, nat., liv, II, 21 and liv. VII, 50.
[ 9 ] However these popular names are rather intended to make image.
[ 10 ] Origins of Alchemy, p. 218.
[ 11 ] This is the process used to make gold.
[ 12 ] Hist. nat., XXXIII, 6, ring of iron encircled with gold; hollow gold blade filled with a light material; 52, gold-plated beds, etc.
[ 13 ] The very name of brass comes from electrum, which had taken on this meaning in the Middle Ages, according to Du Cange.
[ 14 ] Origins of alchemy ( Metals among the Egyptians ), p. 211 and following.
[ 15 ] Basic iron sulphate mixed with copper sulphate.
[ 16 ] That is, until the flux has been absorbed by the walls of the vessel or evaporated.
[ 17 ] This name here seems to mean minium, lead oxide.
[ 18 ] Pliny, Hist. nat., XXXIV, 22. The cadmie designated sometimes a natural copper ore, sometimes the metallic oxides sublimated and carried away by the current of air, in the furnaces where the copper was prepared. These oxides, in addition to zinc, copper and lead, could contain arsenic and antimony.
[ 19 ] Copper sulphate mixed with more or less basic iron sulphate, resulting from the weathering of pyrites. Sory is an analogous material, richer in copper.
[ 20 ] Min.
[ 21 ] Or rather, native sulphur, according to the signs of the manuscript.
[22] Origins of Alchemy, p. 215.