13716

(S) Egyptian Archaeology and Monument Studies

Jochem Kahl

Information for students

MARTELLI, Ma%eo 2024. “Alchemy”, Oxford Classical Dic/onary 2024 h%ps://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.260 PRINCIPE, Lawrence M. 2013. The Secrets of Alchemy. Chicago UP, 1-50. RICHTER, Tonio SebasOan 2019. „Alchemy, Late AnOquity”, in: The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, Oxford. h%ps://doi.org/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah30529 close

Comments

Since the 1st century CE, wri:en texts a:est to a novel approach to domains of knowledge which up to then had been part of specialized craDs and merely oral transmission. Different genres of technical texts, such as treaHse, dialogue, recipe collecHon, bear evidence for an emerging theore&cal interest in the imitaHon of valuable materials, notably gold, silver, purple, and precious stones, and more generally, in the effects and changes exerted by substances on substances. The texts describe technical procedures and appliances to induce such effects and interpret them in terms and categories of natural philosophy and religion. Their theorizing approach seems to have been based on empirical insight gained from a “laboratory” pracHce. This emerging science, in the earliest (Greek) texts called “Divine” or “Sacred art” (?e?a / ?e?? t???? theía / hierà téchne), in later Arabic texts and the LaHn tradiHon derived therefrom also known as ?? ` ?` _?? alkimya? / alc(h)imia, has close conceptual and historical connecHons to Egypt. Egypt is indeed the most salient “mnemotope” mapped in the collecHve memory of alchemical tradiHons from their beginnings. Already the earliest alchemical texts, starHng with the Four Books of Pseudo-Demokritos (1st c. C.E.), place themselves in the seeng of EgypHan temples, and Egypt’s role as the craddle of alchemy maintains a topos in alchemical narraHves throughout Arabic, LaHn, and early modern vernacular tradiHons. Greek and CopHc papyri from Egypt are indeed among the earliest extant material witnesses to alchemy. The most ancient ones of them, two Greek papyrus codices of the 3rd / 4th c. C.E., were found in Western Thebes together with DemoHc and Greek magical manuscripts. They a:est to Roman Egypt as an actual habitat of early alchemical pracHce and text producHon. The original designaHon “divine (or: sacred) art” has been associated by scholars with workshops of late EgypHan temples, their technical skills, technological knowledge, and natural-theological lore. Zosimos, the first pracHHoner and theoreHcian of the “divine art” traceable as a historical individual, lived around 300 C.E. in the Upper EgypHan town of Panopolis (Achmim) which kept its importance as a center of alchemy unHl Islamic Hmes. The earliest extant manuscripts tesHfying to Arabic alchemy, wri:en (notably in CopHc, not Arabic) around 900 C.E., supposedly come from the vicinity of Achmim. The Lecture will be combined out of lectured chapters and readings of Greek, CopHc, and Arabic texts (in English translaHon). Dealing with alchemy in Egypt in (long) late anHquity (1st millennium CE), it will address quesHons, such as: What can be gained from late EgypHan and Greek sources about the origins of alchemy in Egypt? From what contexts come alchemical texts in the 1st millennium CE, and what do they tell us about the different milieus and professional backgrounds of their protagonists? What technical procedures and appliances, what repertoires of substances are emerging from the texts, and what insight into the underlying concepts, categories, and contemporary ‘épistémè’ can be gained therefrom? And last, but not least: what tradiHons are traceable in the CopHc alchemical texts, and what paths of knowledge can be reconstructed, based on their contents and their linguisHc features? close