ORIGIN OF THE WORD CHEMISTRY. n 



daughters were born unto them^ that the sons of God saw 

 the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took 

 them wives of all which they chose. 



" There were giants in the earth in those days ; and 

 also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the 

 daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the 

 same became mighty men, which were of old, men of 

 renown.^^ 



Alluding to this, later writers state that the fallen angels 

 taught women all the secrets of nature^. That one of 

 these is the art of making gold and silver, however, is first 

 mentioned by Zosimus. Other Greek writers use the 

 word Chemia or Chymia in the same sense ; in print we 

 find it first in the Lexicon of Suidas, who lived in the 

 eleventh century, and defines p^T^ycieta as " the preparation 

 of gold and silver .^^ 



All the earlier Greek writers who mention this word 

 were in close connexion with the university of Alexandria ; 

 from this it has been inferred that the artificial preparation 

 of the noble metals was first attempted in Egypt. 



That country was conquered by the Arabians in 640. 

 Here they made undoubtedly their first acquaintance with 

 chemical science ; they prefixed their article to the Greek 

 name, and thus introduced the terms Alchemy, Alchimy, 

 or Alchymy. 



The origin and meaning of these terms have often been 

 discussed. Plutarcli states that the old name of Egypt 

 was yrj^la, that it was so called on account of its black 

 soil, and that the same word designated the black of the 

 eye. From this the conclusion has been drawn that 

 chemistry originally meant the science of Egypt, or, the 

 black of the eye being the symbol of darkness and mystery, 

 that chemistry was the secret or black art. But alchemy 

 * Kopp, op. cit. p. 4. 



