Graeco-Egyptian Alchemy in Byzantium

De Medio Aevo 13.2 (2024): Scientific Interests and Technological Innovation in Byzantium: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 307-319.

The concept of innovation has not been thoroughly explored in the context of Byzantine science, much less so concerning Byzantine alchemy. This article argues that persisting historiographical biases depicting Byzantium as a stagnant culture also influence perceptions of Byzantine science as anti-innovative. Building on recent advancements in the study of innovation in Byzantine culture, this article begins with a preliminary examination of the relationship between science and innovation in Byzantium, revealing intriguing dynamics between the concepts of "tradition" and "innovation". Next, it investigates a case study of innovation in Byzantine alchemy, namely how a monetary and economic innovation, the introduction of the solidus by Constantine the Great, likely influenced the perception of alchemy as primarily a chrysopoetic art. In essence, it explores how an external innovation can impact a scientific field, potentially leading to innovative conceptions and change within it.

The paper focuses on the alchemical laboratory of ancient Greco-Egyptian alchemists, by taking into account especially the earliest alchemical texts (both in the Greek and in the Syriac tradition), ascribed to Pseudo-Democritus, Maria the Jewish and Zosimus. The fijirst part analyzes the possible relationships between the workshops of Egyptian craftsmen (fijirst of all, dyers, metals workers and glass workers) and the activity of the alchemists. The second part gives a general overview on the alchemical instruments described in the Corpus alchemicum .

Journal of the History of Ideas 84.4, 2023

The term “alchemy,” born out of early modern professional polemics among chemists, is problematic as a historical category. The present article shifts away from asking what pre-modern alchemy “really” was, to asking how medieval scholars writing in Greek and Arabic thought about the practice of treating and combining naturally occurring substances to produce apparently quite different substances, and how they interpreted, valorized, or critiqued this practice and its results — in other words, what they thought about chemistry.

in: A. Pellettieri (ed.), Identità euromediterranea e paesaggi culturali del vino e dell’olio, Foggia 2014, 249-259.

Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World Edited by Paul T. Keyser and John Scarborough, 2018

The chapter shows how the texts of early Byzantine alchemy transformed the alchemical tradition. This period is characterized by a generation of “commentators” tied to the Neoplatonic milieu. Their writings, designed primarily to clarify the ideas of the previous generations, represent the most advanced stage of ancient alchemical theory. In the fifth century, authors external to alchemy explicitly speak of alchemy as a contemporary practice to produce gold from other metals. Around the seventh century, the corpus of alchemical texts began to be assembled as an anthology of extracts. The object of the research was agents of transformations of matter. The cause of the transformation is an active principle that acts by dissolution: “divine water” (or sulfur water), mercury, “chrysocolla” (gold solder), or raw sulfur. Mercury is at once the dyeing agent and the prime metallic matter, understood as the common substrate of the transformations and the principle of liquidity

Syllecta Classica, 2018

The earliest alchemical texts have an Egyptian provenance and date to the Roman period. Surprisingly little attention is given to the socio-cultural contexts of the craftsmen who produced them. This paper argues that alchemy originated in the Egyptian priesthood among temple metallurgists who were responsible for making cultic objects. Access to metallurgical recipes was restricted, but with the rise of trade guilds in the Roman period, craft secrets began to circulate more freely. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that these economic shifts are the best explanation for the emergence of alchemical texts in Roman Egypt.

This article examines a little-known and unstudied alchemical treatise, The Epistle on Alchemy (al-Risāla fī l-ṣināʿa) attributed to Aristotle, purportedly translated from Syriac into Arabic by the Nestorian bishop ʿAbdīshōʿ bar Brīkhā (d. 1318). In particular, I investigate the Epistle's discourse on the concealment and revelation of alchemical knowledge. Like other occult sciences, alchemy was characterised by a marked concern for secrecy and frequently employed codes, or Decknamen, when discussing the "Noble Art." Yet the author of the Epistle consciously avoids such conventions, choosing instead to disclose its mysteries in an open and accessible manner, while making clear that secrecy would otherwise be necessary were the reader deemed unworthy. By engaging with scholarship in Islamic and Jewish occult science and esotericism, I show that the author of the Epistle navigates the boundaries between concealment and disclosure by framing his treatise as a private exchange between two foundational figures of philosophy and kingship: Aristotle and Alexander the Great. Based on a study of the Epistle's sources and genre, I consider it possible that the work was not a translation of any Syriac original but a composition by ʿAbdīshōʿ himself and a product of the Arabicspeaking, Islamicate environment in which he lived.

Illinois Classical Studies, 1990

"Alchemy" is the anglicised Byzantine name given to what its practitioners referred to as "the Art" (τἐχνη) or "Knowledge" (ἐπιστήμη), often characterised as divine (θεία), sacred (ἱερά) or mystic (μυστική). While this "techne" underwent many changes in the course of its life of over two thousand years (and there are traces of it even in modern times, as I will discuss), a recognisable common denominator in all the writings is the search for a method of transforming base metals (copper, iron, lead, tin) into noble (electrum, gold or silver). There is unfortunately no modern critical edition of any of these writings (the extant editions being old or uncritical or both), though the Budé has begun the process. In this essay I sketch the background and origins of the ancient alchemy, as well as its later transmutation into a mystical art of personal transformation. Finally I turn to the modern period and briefly examine the influence of this mystical tradition in our own world-picture.

Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies, 2022

This paper was originally written for a conference panel responding to Radcliffe Edmonds’s survey of Greco-Roman magic, _Drawing Down the Moon_. I discuss his chapter on alchemy in light of two new books on Greco-Egyptian alchemy that were published while his manuscript was in press: my own work _Becoming Gold_, and Olivier Dufault’s _Early Greek Alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity_. I explain why new definitions of Greco-Egyptian alchemy are needed and provide one at the end.

2006

This is my doctoral dissertation, written in 2005. My book, Becoming Gold (2018), is an updated and expanded work that is based on this earlier research. The two works are not equivalent, so if you're using this for academic research purposes, you'll want to engage with my book instead of the dissertation.