Union Acadédmique Internationale Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs

Abstract

THE earliest treatises on chemistry were com-posed in Hellenistic Egypt (Alexandria) during the first centuries of the Christian era. Their language was Greek (κινή), and their con-tinuations in the Byzantine period, for example, under Heraclius (A.D. 610–641), present no new features. After the Mohammedan conquest of Egypt in A.D. 640, the treatises passed into an Arabic dress, and from about A.D. 1100 they arrived, in a sadly corrupted form, in the west in the shape of Latin versions (or ‘perversions’) made in Spain. The original Alexandrian treatises have been published, with translations, by Berthelot and Ruelle (“Collection des alchimistes grecs”, 3 vols., Paris, 1887–88), and, although from time to time threats of an ‘improved’ edition have been put forward rather fretfully by German scholars, this publication is likely to remain for some time to come the basis of our knowledge of the earliest chemistry. The principal manuscripts and their contents have been known for a long time; in the selection of texts for publication or repubhcation the advice of a chemist would no doubt prove useful, since the interest and value of such texts vary considerably. Union Acadedmique Internationale. Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs. Publie sous la direction de J. Bidez, F. Cumont, A. Delatte, Sir Frederic Kenyon, O. Lagercrantz, J. Ruska et C. O. Zuretti. Tome 7: Anonymi de arte metallica seu de metallorum conversione in aurum et argentum. Edidit C. O. Zuretti. Pp. lx + 466. (Bruxelles: Maurice Lamertin, 1930.)