So, last November I got to try my hand at Alchemy
Maddalena Rumor, in the Classics Department of Case Western Reserve University came to have dinner with us and mentioned she'd just successfully turned silver gold.
She had an alchemical recipe from a 7th century BCE cuneiform tablet from the library of Ashurbanipal. She'd been working with Rekha Srinivasan, from the Chemistry Department to see if they could translate the cuneiform, identify the substances mentioned, and then try the recipe to see if it worked.
They traveled to the British Museum to examine the tablet up close. By studying the partial strokes along the edges, Maddalena could make some educated guesses about missing words. Rekha, in turn, could use the descriptions of the substances to make some guesses about what they might be. Then they could start testing their best guesses with experiments.
This is complicated by the tendency of alchemical texts to use code words or inside jokes to describe materials or techniques. Something like me making a recipe that calls for 2 Legs and 1 Arm of Policeman and my friends all knowing it means 2.5 ingots of Copper.
I know the word alchemy comes from the Arabic al-kimia and that it eventually developed into chemistry, but I've always associated it with the worst of the Dark Ages in Europe--charlatans or wannabe magicians in smoke-filled, poorly lit cellars full of of mummified animals and just generally gross stuff that is not my jam.
I'm wondering now if that's because medieval alchemists were reading a lot of things literally that weren't meant to be taken that way. There's a reference in one of Maddalena's article's to a rare case where "human excrement" called for in a recipe is revealed to actually mean "garlic." I can see a lot of ancient alchemists laughing up their sleeves.
I had just learned during a trip to Naples the previous summer that the alchemy of Renaissance philosophers like Pico Della Mirandola was very different from the stuff in the basements of Prague. Instead of dreckapotheke, they were translating texts from the Ancients Greeks, texts that were perhaps based on the very tablets from the 7th Century BCE that Maddalena was studying. I promptly begged to observe her next experiment.
She very graciously said yes, so I went down to a lab at Case and I wish I had taken better notes, but I did not, so what I've got is a bunch of pictures, and I'll have to go back and badger Maddalena for details.
These are the ingredients for the next round of testing.
They will be mixed into a solution in the flask on the right and then heated on a burner.
Then silver tablets will be dipped into the solution:
And turn gold!
Not *into* gold. That was not the plan. Hope you aren't disappointed.
If you thought the object of alchemy in those dark basements in Prague was turn to lead into gold, yeah me, too. And maybe it was, but the alchemy of the ancient Near East seems to have been more clear that transmutation wasn't on offer. After reading some of Maddalena's articles, I now know there were four main practices of alchemy back in the day: coloring silver gold, making a silver alloy that still looked like silver, coloring glass to look like precious stones, and dying wool purple without using those expensive snail shells from Tyre.
I talked about alchemy a lot (really, a lot, everyone was very patient) at a recent writing retreat. Erin Bow called it the Science of Knock Offs.
There are multiple ancient sources that say that this "holy and divine art" (hē hiera kai theia technē) was taught to mankind by fallen angels who were sharing the secrets of heaven. I know it seems ridiculous that an all knowing divine being is going to focus on the Secret Science of Knock Offs, but the more I I think about it, the more I can see it.
ARMUMAHEL: We will share with you the great mysteries of heaven!
MANKIND: . . .
ARMUMAHEL: I can save you some money on purple dye.
MANKIND: YAY!
SAMYAZA: So how did the secret sharing go today, Armumahel? Did they ask about the language of birds? The control over monsters of the deep?
ARMUMAHEL: I told'em how to make glass marbles look like sapphires.
SAMYAZA: You do know Enoch is writing all this down. His book is going to be stuck in the apocrypha and we're going to be laughing stocks.
ARMUMAHEL: I promised to tell them tomorrow how to turn silver gold.
SAMYAZA: Ah! Transmutation of matter! That's a good one!
ARMUMAHEL: No, not transmutation. They just want the silver bowls on the alter to be yellow and shiny.
SAMYAZA: . . .
My shiny yellow tablet. : )
PDF | On Nov 8, 2014, Maddalena Rumor and others published Near Eastern origins of Graeco-Egyptian Alchemy - MPIGW 2014 | Find, read and cit
PDF | Most ancient medical traditions, including the Babylonian, record a fair amount of medical ingredients with names that suggest they ar
PDF | http://www.asor.org/anetoday/2018/05/Alchemy-Between-Two-Rivers | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
