Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis
The Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis (also known as the Stockholm papyrus) is a collection of craft recipes compiled in Egypt . It is written in Greek. The Stockholm papyrus has 154 recipes for dyeing, coloring gemstones, cleaning (purifying) pearls, and imitation gold and silver. Certain of them may derive from the Pseudo-Democritus. Zosimos of Panopolis, an Egyptian alchemist of , gives similar recipes. Some of these recipes are found in medieval Latin collections of technological recipes, notably the Mappae clavicula. Leyden papyrus X derives from the same (or very similar) sources, and is written in a similar (possibly the same) hand, using chemically identical ink. The Stockholm papyrus and Leyden papyrus X were both found in Thebes by Giovanni Anastasi Giovani Anastasi ( Senigallia, 20 March 1653 - Macerata, 13 March 1704) was an Italian painter, mainly of religious and history paintings. References He painted portraits in Senigallia of Cardinal legates Giacomo Cantelmo (1690 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip of Palestine and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northeast separates Egypt from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Cairo is the capital and largest city of Egypt, while Alexandria, the second-largest city, is an important industrial and tourist hub at the Mediterranean coast. At approximately 100 million inhabitants, Egypt is the 14th-most populated country in the world. Egypt has one of the longest histories of any country, tracing its heritage along the Nile Delta back to the 6th–4th millennia BCE. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, ur ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Greek Language
Greek ( el, label=Modern Greek, Ελληνικά, Elliniká, ; grc, Ἑλληνική, Hellēnikḗ) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Italy (Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer, ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting impo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pseudo-Democritus
Pseudo-Democritus is the name used by scholars for the anonymous authors of a number of Greek writings that were falsely attributed to the pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus ( 460–370 BC). Several of these writings, most notably the lost works ''On Sympathies and Antipathies'' and ''Artificial Substances'' (Greek: ), were probably written by the Pythagorean physician and pharmacologist Bolos of Mendes ( 3rd or 2d century BC). There are also a number of extant Greek alchemical writings attributed to Democritus, whose author has sometimes likewise been identified as Bolos of Mendes, but who is now thought to have been an anonymous author active during the second half of the first century AD, most likely c. 54–68 AD. These writings are some of the oldest alchemical works in existence, and have played an important role in defining alchemy as a discipline. In their original form, they probably consisted of a series of four books on dyeing: two b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Zosimos Of Panopolis
Zosimos of Panopolis ( el, Ζώσιμος ὁ Πανοπολίτης; also known by the Latin name Zosimus Alchemista, i.e. "Zosimus the Alchemist") was a Greco-Egyptian alchemist and Gnostic mystic who lived at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century AD. He was born in Panopolis (present day Akhmim, in the south of Roman Egypt), and flourished ca. 300. He wrote the oldest known books on alchemy, which he called "Cheirokmeta," using the Greek word for "things made by hand." Pieces of this work survive in the original Greek language and in translations into Syriac or Arabic. He is one of about 40 authors represented in a compendium of alchemical writings that was probably put together in Constantinople in the 7th or 8th century AD, copies of which exist in manuscripts in Venice and Paris. Stephen of Alexandria is another. Arabic translations of texts by Zosimos were discovered in 1995 in a copy of the book ''Keys of Mercy and Secrets of Wisdom'' by Ibn Al-Hassan Ib ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alchemy
Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in a number of pseudepigraphical texts written in Greco-Roman Egypt during the first few centuries AD.Principe, Lawrence M. The secrets of alchemy'. University of Chicago Press, 2012, pp. 9–14. Alchemists attempted to purify, mature, and perfect certain materials. Common aims were chrysopoeia, the transmutation of "base metals" (e.g., lead) into "noble metals" (particularly gold); the creation of an elixir of immortality; and the creation of panaceas able to cure any disease. The perfection of the human body and soul was thought to result from the alchemical ''magnum opus'' ("Great Work"). The concept of creating the philosophers' stone was variously connected with all of the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mappae Clavicula
The ''mappae clavicula'' is a medieval Latin text containing manufacturing recipes for crafts materials, including for metals, glass, mosaics, and dyes and tints for materials. The information and style in the recipes is very terse. Each recipe consists of the names of the ingredients and typically about two sentences on combining the ingredients together. A small minority of the recipes go to about six sentences. The text comes with a short preamble, and other than that it is just recipes. The number of recipes was expanded over the course of the medieval centuries, and some medieval copies have deletions as well as additions, so it is better thought of as a family of texts with a largely common core, not a single text. Most of the ''Mappae Clavicula'' recipes are also in medieval Latin in a text known as the ''Compositiones ad Tingenda'' (English: "Recipes for Coloring (or Tingeing)"). Origin and accretion The core was probably originally compiled around AD 600, perhaps in Alex ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leyden Papyrus X
The Leyden papyrus X (P. Leyden X) is a papyrus codex written in Greek at about the end of the 3rd century A.D.E.R.Caley, ''The Leyden Paprus X: An English Translation with Brief Notes''p.1149 "These two papyri have, however, upon the basis of unquestioned philological and paleographic evidence, been ascertained to have been written at about the end of the third century A.D. so that they are by far the earliest original historical evidence that we have in our possession concerning the nature and the extent of ancient chemical knowledge." or perhaps around 250 A.D. and buried with its owner, and today preserved at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Origin The Leiden papyrus was discovered at Thebes in Egypt, together with the Stockholm Papyrus, which was probably written by the same scribe, and many Greek magical papyri, in the early 19th century by an adventurer calling himself Jean d'Anastasi, holding the office of Swedish vice-consul in Alexandria. In 1828 he sold a number ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Giovanni Anastasi (merchant)
Giovanni Anastasi (1765–1860) was born into an Armenian family from Damascus.Dawson, Warren R., Anastasi, Sallier and Harris and their Papyri, in: JEA 35, pp. 158-162. He established himself as a wealthy merchant and antiquarian. Anastasi served as a Swedish-Norwegian Consul General from 1828 until his death. He sold large collections of antiquities—to the Dutch government in 1828, now in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, including the Ipuwer Papyrus; another collection—to the British Museum in 1839, and another to the French in 1857. In 1839, the British Museum acquired from Anastasi's collection ostracon of Sinuhe ''The Story of Sinuhe'' (also known as Sanehat) Retrieved November 6, 2018. is considered one of the finest works of ancient Egyptian literature. It is a narrative set in the aftermath of the death of Pharaoh Amenemhat I, founder of the Twelfth .... See also * Giovanni di Niccolò Pappaffy, his nephew, Greek Ottoman merchant in British Mal ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Otto Lagercrantz
Carl Otto Lagercrantz (26 February 1868 – 13 January 1938) was a Swedish classical philologist and rector of Uppsala University. Biography Otto Lagercrantz was born at Näsby in Jönköping County, Sweden. Lagercrantz graduated from high school in Uppsala in 1887. He then studied at Uppsala University, earning his bachelor's degree in 1890 and his licentiate degree in 1895. He completed his Ph.D. in 1898 with a dissertation titled ''Zur griechischen Lautgeschichte''. He then served as professor of Greek, first at the Gothenburg University College and then at Uppsala University. He was appointed prorector of Uppsala University in 1929 and served as its rector 1932–1933. Lagercrantz had wide scholarly interests. In the field of papyrology, he became an international expert on alchemical manuscripts: he published the Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis in 1913 and was co-publisher of the definitive work in the area, ''Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs''. His other works concern ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alchemical Documents
Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in a number of pseudepigraphical texts written in Greco-Roman Egypt during the first few centuries AD.Principe, Lawrence M. The secrets of alchemy'. University of Chicago Press, 2012, pp. 9–14. Alchemists attempted to purify, mature, and perfect certain materials. Common aims were chrysopoeia, the transmutation of "base metals" (e.g., lead) into "noble metals" (particularly gold); the creation of an elixir of immortality; and the creation of panaceas able to cure any disease. The perfection of the human body and soul was thought to result from the alchemical ''magnum opus'' ("Great Work"). The concept of creating the philosophers' stone was variously connected with all of these ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Art Technological Sources
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of what constitutes art, and its interpretation has varied greatly throughout history and across cultures. In the Western tradition, the three classical branches of visual art are painting, sculpture, and architecture. Theatre, dance, and other performing arts, as well as literature, music, film and other media such as interactive media, are included in a broader definition of the arts. Until the 17th century, ''art'' referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences. In modern usage after the 17th century, where aesthetic considerations are paramount, the fine arts are separated and distinguished from acquired skills in general, such as the decorative or applied arts. The nature of art and related concepts, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chemistry Literature
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, properties, behavior and the changes they undergo during a reaction with other substances. Chemistry also addresses the nature of chemical bonds in chemical compounds. In the scope of its subject, chemistry occupies an intermediate position between physics and biology. It is sometimes called the central science because it provides a foundation for understanding both basic and applied scientific disciplines at a fundamental level. For example, chemistry explains aspects of plant growth (botany), the formation of igneous rocks (geology), how atmospheric ozone is formed and how environmental pollutants are degraded (ecology), the properties of the soil on the moon (cosmochemistry), how medications work ( pharmacology), and how to collect DNA evidenc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |