speaks of him in the ‘‘Phzedrus” as the inventor of numbers 
nd letters. He was in fact the Egyptian god of letters, and as 
such of course could be described as the author of multitudinous 
yorks. He was the deified intellect, and hence has often been 
confounded with Thoth, ‘the intellect.” Sir Gardner Wilkinson 
aks of Hermes as an emanation of Thoth, and as representing 
he abstract quality of the understanding.” The woodcut (Fig. 
representing Hermes, is from a temple at Pselcis, which was 
cted by Erganum, a contemporary of Ptolemy Philadelphus. 
smay be well to note the extent of the symbolism associated 
vith the sculpture ; in one hand Hermes holdsthe Crux ansatq, 
symbol of life, in the other a staff, associated with which are 
‘a serpent, a scorpion, a hawk’s head, and, above all, a circle sur- 
rounded by an asp, each with its special symbolical signifi- 
ance. On the Rosetta stone Hermes is called ‘“‘the great 
and great,” or twice great; he was called Ziasmegistus, or 
thrice great, according to the twelfth aphorism of the emerald 
able, because he possessed three parts of the wisdom of the 
Fic 6 Hermes Trismegistus ; from the Temple at Pselcis. 
hole world, which in his light of deified intellect he might 
well do. 
Perhaps no author is more often quoted by the Alchemists than 
Hermes, the supposed father of their art. They called themselves 
hermetic philosophers. Alchemy is often called the Hermetic 
rt, or simply Aermetics. ‘To enclose a substance very securely, 
by placing it in a glass tube and fusing, or sealing, the mouth 
of the tube, was called securing with ‘‘ Hermes his seal,” and 
the echo of the idea lives amongst us yet ; for,-in our most modern 
eatises, the expression ‘‘to seal hermetically” may be found, 
Petrus Hauboldus, of Copenhagen, was surely one of the most 
enterprising publishers of his day, for he had the temerity to 
publish a book entitled, Wermetis Aegyptiorum et Chemicorum 
Sapientia. A book square as to its dimensions, small as to its 
type, drier than dust as to its contents, of four hundred odd 
pages, of two centuries of age, writ in Latin, with a sprinkling of 
racted Greek, and floridly dedicated to Jean Baptiste Col- 
t. A book wherein the author endeavours to prove that alchemy 
known before the flood, that Hermes Trismegistus was a real 
‘personage, the inventor of all arts, the father of alchemy, and 
much else besides. We may well imagine that the author of such 
axtreatise was no ordinary man, and our conjecture proves a 
tolerably correct one, Olaf Borch, whose Latinised name because 
g1 
the more resounding Olaus Borrichius, was apparently the great 
mainstay of the University of Copenhagen ; at all events, he was 
simultaneously Professor of Philology, Poetry, Chemistry, and 
Botany, and we must either imagine that in 1660, professors were 
difficult to procure in the Kingdom of Denmark, or else that 
Olaus Borrichius was such an astounding genius that he could 
readily undertake the duties of four diverse professorships at the 
same time. We can scarcely imagine three greater antitheses 
than the philological faculty, the poetical faculty, and the 
chemical faculty ; but here we find them united, or assumed 
to be united, inone man. Yet more, Borrichius was appointed 
Court Physician, and Assessor of the Supreme Court of Law. 
He was the very personification of all learning, if we may judge 
by the treatment he received from his countrymen. In addition 
to the work mentioned above, he wrote several on philo- 
logy, on the quantity of syllables, on the Greek and Latin poets 
on medicine, chemistry, and botany. It is strange that a man 
who, presumably in his capacity of judge, was in the habit of 
sifting evidence, and of avoiding hasty generalisation, should have 
endeavoured with much elaborate argument to prove that Hermes 
Trismegistus was a real personage ; that his Smaragdine table 
was really found by the wife of Abraham, and that it contained 
matter of the highest import to mankind. We must imagine 
that in this matter Borrichius allowed the imaginative faculty 
due to his poetical temperament to exert an undue influence 
over his more sober judgment. He is equally at pains to assert 
the authenticity and antiquity of the various Greek MSS. on 
alchemy in the libraries of Europe. He specially mentions a 
MS. by Zozimus of Panapolis, on the art of making gold, in the 
King’s Library in Paris; and Scaliger tells us that this same 
MS. was written in the fifth century. M. Ferdinand Hoefer is 
apparently penetrated by the Borrichian spirit of faith and ima- 
gination, and he unhesitatingly accepts the early date attributed 
to the Paris MS. 
M. Hoefer traces the rise of Alchemy to the fourth century of 
our era ; it was then knownas the “‘sacred art” (ars sacra ; réxyn 
t<pa), and one of the chief writers on the subject was the said 
Zozimus of Panapolis. The principal Greek MSS. attributed to 
Zozimus, which exist in the Bibliothtque Nationale, have the 
following titles :—(a#) On Furnaces and Chemical Instruments ; — 
(8) On the Virtue’ and Composition of Waters; (vy) On the 
Holy Water ; (5) Onthe Sacred Art of making Gold and Silver. 
In the latter, Zozimus mentions that if the ‘*‘ soul of copper,” 
which remains above the water of mercury, be heated, it gives off 
an aériform body (oda mvevuarixoy), and this (says M. Hoefer) 
was probably oxygen gas, while the soul of copper was oxide of 
mercury, A second author of early Greek MSS. was Pelagius, 
who alludes to two writers named Zozimus—one the ‘‘ Ancient,” 
the other the ‘‘ Physician.” A third author, Olympiodorus, 
who calls the “sacred art” chemistry (xnuela), quotes Hermes 
Democritus, and Anaximander as alchemists. ; 
Democritus (not to be confounded with the Greek philosopher 
of that name), in his ‘* Physics and Mystics,” informs us how he 
invoked the shade of his master, Ostane the Mede, and how the 
spirit appeared and accorded him mystical communings. Synesius, 
the commentator of Democritus, lived, according to M. Hoefer, 
about fifty years after Zozimus (say 450 A.D.) ; but a treatise on 
the Philosopher’s Stone is in existence which claims Synesius as 
its author, which mentions Geber, who lived at least 400 
years later. Mary the Jewess, who is often alluded to by later 
alchemists, was a contemporary of Democritus, and a writer on 
alchemy; she also invented various chemical vessels, among 
others a bath, to gently transmit heat by means of hot sand or 
cinders, which (according to M. Hoefer) is still called after her, 
a Bain-Marie. 
We cannot assign to the Greek MSS, in the Bibliothéque 
Nationale the antiquity which M. Toefer and others so readily 
accept ; and we must still hold to our opinion that they and 
all other known Greek MSS. on alchemy are the produc- 
tion of later centuries, and are probably the work of Greek 
monks. In the first place, who was Zozimus? Was it 
Zozimus the Anti-pope, who succeeded Innocent I., or Zozimus 
the Sophist of Alexandria, or Zozimus the historian? No one 
can tell. It cannot be pretended that any of the Paris MSS. 
are in the actual writing of Zozimus. One of thein is entitled 
‘* Zozimus the Panapolite, on the Chemical Art, to his Sister 
Theosebia ;” but, according to the ‘‘ Biographie Universelle,” it 
was Zozimus of Alexandria who dedicated books to his sister 
Theosebia, and he lived in the third century B,c., while Zozimus 
of Panopolis lived in the fourth century A.p, Here, then, we 
