WORD ^'CHEMIA^^ OR '' CHEMISTRY." 109 



occurs in Deuteronomy, xxxii. 24, in connexion with the 

 names of snakes or some such animals." 



" The fundamental meaning of the Arabic root Hamma 

 is also ' to be hot ;' but this verb has been made to serve 

 for ' to decree/ ' to be black/ ' to have a fever.' " After 

 giving a number of derivatives, he says, " Many of the 

 above words {Hummums, for instance) have been adopted 

 over all Asia by non-Semitics no less than Semitics." He 

 considers the root to be Egyptian. 



Prof. Theodores says that, " HKimiahe an Arabic word, 

 the attempt to graft it on hot or black is futile." This 

 being from grammatical considerations, I take it as decisive, 

 as I will not venture on transcribing the Arabic vocables 

 which the Professor so easily jots down. " Bochart says 

 that Chimia was first mentioned by Firmicus." " The 

 word Chimia is not of legitimate Arabic formation. The 

 Arabian lexicographers are unable to arrange it under a 

 verbal root ; they merely explain what Kimia can do, not 

 how the word originated. Therefore Freitag, in the fourth 

 volume of his large Lexicon, explains the word, but calls 

 it a foreign importation. Bochart's notion to derive it from 

 Kama, ' to conceal,' because it was an occult science, is 

 no revelation. No adept gives such a title to his own 

 profession." 



" The Arabians took the word as the Romans and Greeks 

 had done before, where they found it, viz. in Egypt, the 

 Greek inhabitants of which, at the time of the Moham- 

 medan conquest, called that science by a name closely re- 

 sembling that by which it was known in Europe, although 

 it was of old Egyptian, Hamite origin. The Arabians 

 made its acquaintance in the form of 'xrjfieta or '^(rjfiia. 

 This sound they transcribed in Semitic characters, putting 

 the 3 for the Greek %. That this was an orthodox practice, 

 the Talmud incidentally but fully proves. In the treatise 



