ROMAN ORIENT AND FAR EAST — SELIGMAN 565 



ders of far off lands have always had a strong appeal. How much 

 stronger will this appeal be when the ideas transmitted have to do 

 with the most deep-seated of all longings, the defeat of old age and 

 death. 



We may, I think, regard it as a priori unlikely that the Elixir Vitae 

 was of Near Eastern origin, since there is no mention of anything of 

 the sort in the innumerable Egyptian texts that have come down to 

 us; nor is any such substance recorded in the cuneiform texts of the 

 Sumerians or Assyrians. 40 On the other hand, there is the general 

 belief that alchemy (the transmutation of metals) arose among 

 Alexandrine Greeks in the early centuries of our era, later reaching 

 central Europe via the Arabs. In Alexandria transmutation had a 

 philosophical basis; moreover the earliest Greek alchemical writings 

 abound in references to Near Eastern authorities and traditions, 41 but 

 although the Ley den papyrus of the end of the third century, from 

 Thebes, indicates how jewellers may imitate gold and silver, there is 

 no reference to the Elixir, and in the West it was only later that the 

 substance for transmuting metals was considered to have the property 

 of prolonging life indefinitely. 



The earliest alchemical writers who have left literary remains lived 

 at a period extending from the third to the fifth centuries, 42 when 

 Alexandria was still a great commercial metropolis. A large portion 

 of the Chinese trade reached Alexandria; and just as legends concern- 

 ing the Valley of Diamonds and asbestos were transmitted to the Far 

 East, so Far Eastern ideas concerning the Elixir might well be dis- 

 cussed in this western city of philosophers. In China such ideas were 

 already well developed centuries before the beginning of the Christian 

 era, for Ch'in Shih Huang Ti (249-210 B. C), the "First Emperor" 

 is recorded as having occupied much of his later life in the search for 

 immortality, to be gained by means of a magic drug believed to exist 

 in the three Isles of the Immortals in the Eastern Sea. These islands, 

 P'eng-lai and its fellows, were not so very remote from the home of 

 mankind, and they had been seen by many though it was impossible 

 to land. Having come under the influence of two celebrated magicians 

 the Emperor organized an elaborate expedition in search of the islands. 

 The expedition did not return, but this failure did not daunt the Em- 

 peror, and to the end of his days he sought to discover some means of 

 contact with the immortals and to gain access to their elixir. 



It should be pointed out that long before this, jade had been regarded 

 as prolonging life and preserving the tissues from corruption — as indi- 



40 The large collection of magical texts, coming down to Coptic times, published by Francois Lexa under 

 the title La Magie dans l'Egypte antique, Paris, 1925, contains no text referring either to the Elixir or to 

 the transmutation of metals. With regard to Mesopotamia, my statement is made on the authority of 

 Dr. Campbell Thompson. 



41 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed., 1929, s. v. Aichemt. 



«i Stillman, John M., The story of early chemistry, p. 150, New York, 1924. 



