Alchemy and the textual tradition
Posted on | October 24, 2008 |
Many strands of tradition come together in productions like Codex Gigas or the Gospel ‘Golden codices’ of Stockholm and St. Petersburg, mentioned in recent posts. This is surely a key reason why the study of texts and manuscripts is so interesting: books and documents reflect multiple currents of thought and practice, and represent the texture of cultural history at particular moments of time.
In Codex Gigas, for example, we find not only particular versions of biblical and other writings – which are significant in themselves for the choice of works and wording – but a range of features reflecting the art and craft of book production.
The expression and transmission of ideas in written form are impossible without the technologies that make writing and reading practical realities. The most sublime of human thoughts do not exist independently of the technologies that allow them to survive.
An interesting reminder of the role of technology in cultural history is provided by another text in Stockholm, older than Codex Gigas by several centuries and preserved on papyrus. Brought to Europe in the early nineteenth century along with some other papyri, the Stockholm alchemical papyrus, from the third or fourth century ad, is registered as no. 5653 in the Leuven Database of Ancient Books. The text gives a collection of recipes for working with (or imitating) metals, precious stones and pearls, and for preparing and dyeing woolstuffs.
The papyrus was originally edited by Otto Lagercrantz in 1913, and translated into English by E.R. Caley in the Journal of Chemical Education 4, 1926, 979-1002. It has been re-edited along with a related papyrus in Leiden in R. Halleux (ed.), Les alchimistes grecs, I: Papyrus de Leyde. Papyrus de Stockholm. Fragments de recettes (Collection des universités de France), Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1981; cf. his Indices chemicorum Graecorum, I: Papyrus Leidensis. Papyrus Holmiensis, Rome, Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1983.
I have not been able to locate any images of the papyrus on the Internet. Bibliographical information indicates the availability of a plate in a recent volume of the Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini (CPF): testi e lessico nei papiri di cultura greca e latina, Parte IV.2: Tavole, Florence, Olschki, 2008 (plate 96). Online images would be helpful for appreciating the character of the manuscript and for comparing the script with handwriting in other papyri, particularly in view of uncertainty about whether the papyrus belongs in the third or fourth century.
The Stockholm and Leiden papyri are included in Stanton J. Linden, The Alchemy Reader: From Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003. This collection of source materials offers a convenient way of tracing the interweaving of alchemical and other traditions of thought over the centuries.
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