Mr. J. D. Smith on Early Egyptian Chemistry. 143 



have abundant evidence of their famihar and skilful practice of 

 many metallurgic arts, there is no representation nor evidence 

 whatever, — I speak under correction, — of their acquaintance 

 with the art of distillation ; and I hold that, in this instance, the 

 absence of such evidence amounts to aprimdfacie proof that they 

 were ignorant of it. How these acids were to be obtained without 

 distillation, Mr. Herapath does not inform us. I have here 

 taken the most favourable supposition, that the presumed Egyp- 

 tian sulphuric acid was obtained by distillation, like the Nord- 

 hausen acid, rather than by any complicated processes similar to 

 those employed in the present day. 



Again, if it can be shown that the Egyptians of those times 

 were acquainted with substances capable of producing a solution 

 of silver, it is surely advisable to pause before adopting a theory 

 involving the employment of various materials and several com- 

 plicated processes, of which, excepting silver and common salt, 

 there is no evidence whatever they knew of, and take Horace's 

 counsel — 



" Never presume to make a god appear. 

 But for a business worthy of a god." 



With silver, and consequently with its ores, with common salt, 

 and with lime, it will at once be admitted that this nation was 

 familiar; and although it is probably incapable of proof that 

 ammonia was known to them, yet if we consider that sal-ammoniac 

 was for ages derived exclusively from Egypt, being procured 

 from the soot of camel's-dung used as fuel, a necessity, and con- 

 sequently a practice, which must have existed in the Mosaic 

 epoch as well as now, since no other fuel is procurable in the 

 Desert, together with the unchangeableuess of eastern habits, and 

 the fact that this salt was known to the wi-iter of the earliest 

 authentic chemical treatise extant, it is scarcely assuming too 

 much to believe that sal-ammoniac was employed in the arts in 

 ancient Egypt ; and with these four substances, as every chemist 

 knows, a solution of silver may readily be procured without the 

 intervention of nitric, or indeed of any acid whatever; which 

 solution is decomposed by exposure to air and light, particularly 

 if in contact with an organic body, with the production of dark 

 purple-black stains. It must not be supposed, because an ar- 

 gentine solution might have been procured in this way at the 

 period we arc considering, that I therefore hold such must have 

 been the solution employed in Egypt ; but that I merely suggest 

 it as more probable and consistent with existing evidence, than 

 the wholly gratuitous supposition that the marking-ink of ancient 

 Egypt had nitrate of silver for its basis. 



How the notion first arose, that the Israelitish idol was dis- 

 solved, I cannot comprehend, save that the text was never read 



