In the Melting Pot: Cultural Mixture and the Presentation of Alchemical Knowledge in the Letter from Isis to Horus

Abstract

This article investigates how the Letter from Isis to Horus (first-fourth century CE) explores the literary potentialities allowed by the complex cultural backdrop one finds in late antique Egypt. By looking into how this example of alchemical writing both engages with and departs from shared motifs of Hermetism, the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri, and 1 Enoch, it demonstrates how the Letter uses literary artifice in a way that gives alchemical knowledge a specific and distinct voice. It also argues that the cultural mixture of Hermetism, magic, and Scripture represented in the Letter reflects the alchemical procedure of mixing frequently mentioned in the text.