112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



by tlie examination of the objects that have come down to us. The 

 earliest precise and detailed texts describing their processes are 

 contained in an Egyptian papyrus found at Thebes, and now in 

 the museum at Leyden. 



This papyrus is in the Greek language and dates from the third 

 century of the Christian era. In my translation of it, comparing 

 parts of it with phrases in the works of Pliny and Vitruvius on 

 the same subjects and with Greek alchemistic works of the fourth 

 and fifth centuries, I have reconstituted a whole science, ancient 

 alchemy, till now misunderstood and uncomprehended, because it 

 was founded on a mixture of real facts, profound views on the 

 unity of matter, and chimerical religious fancies. These prac- 

 tices and theories had a still larger bearing than the working 

 of metals. The industries of the precious metals were in fact 

 associated at that epoch with those of the dyeing of cloths, 

 the coloring of glasses, and the imitation of precious stones, all 

 guided by the same tinctorial ideas and executed by the same 

 operators. 



Thus alchemy and the chimerical hope of making gold were 

 derived from the goldsmiths^ artifices for coloring metals. The 

 pretended processes of transmutation which were current during 

 the middle ages were in their origin only tricks for preparing 

 alloys of inferior standard that is, for imitating and falsifying 

 the precious metals. But, by an almost invincible attraction, the 

 operators addicted to these practices did not hesitate to imagine 

 that one could pass from the imitation of gold to its effective 

 formation especially if he had the aid of the supernatural pow- 

 ers, invoked by magical formulas. 



At any rate, it was not known till now how these practices and 

 theories passed from Egypt, where they were flourishing toward 

 the end of the Roman Empire, into the West, where we find them 

 in full development from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 

 in the writings of the Latin alchemists and in the laboratories of 

 the goldsmiths, dyers, and makers of colored glass. Their renas- 

 cence was generally attributed to transla,tions of Arabian works 

 made at that epoch. But, without assuming to deny the part 

 played by the Arabian books in the renascence of the arts and sci- 

 ences in the West, in the period of the Crusades, it is no less cer- 

 tain that a continuous tradition subsisted in the professional rec- 

 ollections of the arts and trades from the Roman Empire till the 

 Carlovingian period, and later a tradition of chemical manipu- 

 lations and scientific and mystical ideas. In fact, in pursuing my 

 studies of the history of science, I have met, in the examination 

 of the Latin works of the middle ages, certain technical manuals 

 which were related most directly with the metallurgical treatises 

 of the Greco-Egyptian alchemists and goldsmiths. I purpose to 



