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ESSAY REVIEW

The Tome of Images: an Arabic
Compilation of Texts by Zosimos of
Panopolis and a Source of the Turba
Philosophorum

The Book of Pictures. Mu½¬af a½-½uwar by Zosimos of Panopolis. Facsimile with an

Introduction, (Corpus Alchemicum Arabicum II.1). By THEODOR ABT. Pp. 69 text,

illus.; pp. 448 facsimiles. Living Human Heritage Publications: Zurich. 2007. $250.00

(hbk). ISBN: 978-3-9522608-5-2.

The Book of Pictures. Mu½¬af a½-½uwar by Zosimos of Panopolis. Edition of the

Pictures and Introduction, (Corpus Alchemicum Arabicum Supplement). By THEODOR

ABT. Pp. 162, illus., index. Living Human Heritage Publications: Zurich. 2007. $43.00

(hbk). ISBN: 978-3-9522608-6-9.

Since Manfred Ullmann and Fuat Sezgin laid the foundations for research into Arabic

alchemy some 35 years ago,1 a slow but steady stream of publications in the area have

appeared. However, critical editions, not to speak of translations, are still not avail-

able for the majority of even the most renowned Arabic alchemical texts and authors.

For this reason Theodor Abt is to be congratulated for his attempt to address this

problem with the Corpus Alchemicum Arabicum (henceforth, CALA) series. The fi rst

text to have been edited in the series was Ibn Umayl’s (tenth cent.?) Kitāb ¬all

al-rumūz (CALA I, 2003), a lesser known work by the author of the Book of the

Silvery Water and Starry Earth (Kit×b al-m×’ al-waraq÷ wa-l-arÅ al-najmiyya).

In choosing the Tome of Images,2 an Arabic text ascribed to Zosimos of Panopolis

(fl . ca AD 300), for the second volume in the series, Abt becomes not only the fi rst to

© Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 2009 DOI: 10.1179/174582309X405255

ambix, Vol. 56 No. 1, March, 2009, 76–88

1 Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972) and Sezgin, Geschichte des

arabischen Schrifttums, vol. 4 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1973).
2 I choose not to employ Abt’s designation ‘Book of Pictures’ in recognition of two facts: (a) the Arabic title

of the work, according to the unique manuscript, is Mu½¬af al-½uwar, but another collection of Arabic texts

attributed to Zosimos, and one which has a much stronger claim to authenticity, is entitled Kit×b al-½uwar.

To distinguish the two, I translate kitāb as ‘book’ (its standard meaning) and mu½¬af as ‘tome’ (the term

generally refers to a sacred or revered book). And (b) the Kitāb al-½uwar (Book of Images), which is likely

to have been the earlier of the two books in date, contains no illustrations, so I translate ½uwar, which

could equally mean ‘pictures’, ‘illustrations’ or even ‘forms’ in the Platonic sense, as ‘images’ to allow for a

non-physical understanding of the term.

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77ESSAY REVIEW

publish such a text but also the fi rst to devote a book-length work to Zosimos. The

Tome of Images is a dialogue between Zosimos and his disciple Theosebeia, covering

a wide range of topics, apparently without following a coherent order. The text,

which fi lls 223 folios in the unique manuscript that preserves it (İstanbul Arkeoloji

Müzeleri Kütüphanesi MS 1574), is divided into 13 books (ma½ā¬if), and adorned

with 42 illustrations.

Abt is very thorough and he includes in CALA II.1 facsimiles of everything between

the covers of the manuscript. This is particularly nice because it offers the readers

access to interesting marginalia and a page of owners’ inscriptions and other notes

by many hands (fol. 223b) that would not appear in an edition of the text. Great care

has been taken in presenting the facsimiles in a way that conveys something of the

aesthetic experience of reading the manuscript itself. Despite the reduced size of the

facsimiles they are clear and well printed, although the marginal note on fol. 109b

has been partially cut in the facsimile. Both CALA II.1 and the Supplement contain

the same forward and introduction (pp. 9–69 in both), after which the bulk of the

Supplement (pp. 73–157) is taken up by facsimiles of the manuscript’s illustrations

without the text, but accompanied by translations of descriptions of the illustrations

found in the text and marginalia or Abt’s own descriptions when the manuscript

supplies none.

The manuscript of the Tome of Images, dated to AH 668/AD 1270 (not 1211 as

claimed by Abt [p. 20]) and produced in Egypt (Cairo?), is an important cultural

artefact in its own right. Not only are its illustrations rare survivals of early Mamluk

painting from Egypt, but they comprise the earliest known example of a continuous

series of allegorical alchemical images. On the date of this manuscript alone, the

advent of this genre of illustration can be seen to predate its appearance in the West

by almost two centuries.3 The artistic value of this manuscript merits the publication

of its illustrations in facsimile; however, the choice of this format to present the

manuscript as a whole is problematic.

A facsimile edition is not really an edition at all in the sense that the text Abt

prints is not transcribed, much less edited or translated, with the exception of the

descriptions of the illustrations in the Supplement and a few passages presented in

the introduction.4 For historians of alchemy, the majority of whom lack the linguistic

and palaeographic skills required to tackle a thirteenth-century Arabic manuscript

directly, the Tome of Images, as published by Abt, remains tantalisingly inaccessible.

Thus, since Abt’s forward and introduction provide the only access to the text

available to most interested readers, he is obliged to provide as much information as

he can as clearly, concisely and accurately as possible. Abt’s commentary deals with

two aspects of his subject: (a) an interpretation of the text and illustrations and (b)

a study of the origins of the Tome of Images and the signifi cance of its infl uence on

later alchemical literature.

3 For the history of series of allegorical alchemical images in the West, the origins of which are usually located

in the fi fteenth century with such texts as the Aurora consurgens, see Robert Halleux, Les textes alchimiques

(Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental, Fasc. 32) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979), 150; Barbara Obr
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The Visions Of Zosimos

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The Visions Of Zosimos

F. Sherwood Taylor

To cite this article: F. Sherwood Taylor (1937) The Visions Of Zosimos, Ambix, 1:1, 88-92, DOI:
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88 Translation of

THE VISIONS OF ZOSIMOS.

Translation and Prefatory Note by F. SHERWOOD TAYLOR.

THE Visions of Zosimos are contained in the texts 1 ZWCJ'tp,ou 'TOU B€lov rrr€p'
ap€Tijc;; rr paEtc; a, 1-5, rrrpaELc; {3' and rrrpaELC; "I'. A short indication of
their character has been given on pp. 42-44 of this journal.

Zosimos of Panopolis was perhaps the most important of the Grreco-Egyptian
alchemists. He is not mentioned by any non-alchemical author earlier than
Suidas, who states that Zosimos and Theosebeia (his sister) wrote a work,
Cheirok1neta (or M an£p'ulations), a chemical encyclopredia in 28 books. Of this'
certain existing works. of Zosimos are fragments. Zosimos probably belongs
to the third century A.D. He cites Demokritos and most of the carly authors,
and also Africanus, who died A.D. 232. He is himself .cited by Olynlpiodoros
(early fifth century): he mentions the Serapeum, destroyed in A.D. 390, as
if still in being .. The general character of his allegorical writings is consistent
with a third century origin, and probably his period of work ce~tred round
A.D. 300. Zosimos of Panopolis is not, of course, identical with Zosinlos the
historian. '

He produced several works on Alchemy and a collection of some of the
alchemical works extant in his time; a part of this collection survives in a
fragmentary condition. It is difficult to tell how much of the work of Zosimos
was original. There is no doubt that he had practical laboratory experience;
but most of his extant writings are discussions of the experimental work of
Demokritos and Maria. The Visions stand quite apart frotn his other writings,
and indeed from all other Greek Alchemy, which contains nothing else of his
elaborately allegorical character. They have indeed much of the character
of actual dreams, which may indeed have afforded a basis, at least, for these
writings. .

ZOSIMOS. OF VIRTUE.

Lesson 1.
1. The composition of waters, the movement, growth, removal, and

restitution of corporeal nature, the separation of the spirit frpm the body,
and the fixation of the spirit on the body are not due to ·foreign natures, but
to one single nature reacting on itself, a single species, such as the hard bodies
of metals and the moist juices of plants.

1 Berthelot, Collection des Alchimistes G1'ecs.Texte, 107-112, 115-118.

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And in this
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Review by: H.-P. Michael Freyer
Source: Sudhoffs Archiv, Bd. 82, H. 1 (1998), pp. 110-111
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110 Buchbesprechungen

Erkenntnis und literarischer ,Rhetorik' ein Charakteristikum seiner Personlichkeit bzw. seiner Epoche selbst

(S. 327-335) erkannt.

Das Thema des medicus philologus durchzieht das ganze Buch, laBt sich aber anhand eines an sich schon

bedeutsamen Postulats besonders verdeutlichen. Giovanna Ferrari bestreitet namlich die in der Literatur gan

gige Annahme, Benedetti habe in Padua Anatomie unterrichtet, schlagt dagegen mit iiberzeugenden Argu
menten (S. 82-84, S. 164-166) das Collegium Medicum in Venedig, wo seit dem 14. Jahrhundert anatomi

sche Sektionen regelmaBig stattfinden, als seine eigentliche Lehr- und Wirkungsstatte vor. Nicht die schola

stische, wenn auch schon erneuerte Tradition des Studium Patavinum, sondern die kulturellen Anspriiche der

ungewohnlich gebildeten Klasse der venetianischen Patrizier konnen Benedettis vielfachen Facetten eine

gewisse Einheitlichkeit geben (selbst seine griechischen Kenntnisse seien zum Teil auf die langjahrigen Auf

enthalte in Kreta als Militararzt im Dienste der Seerepublik zuruckzufuhren). Insofern erscheinen die MaB

stabe einer nur internen Anatomiegeschichte fiir eine gerechte Beurteilung seines Werkes unangebracht.
Fur den Spezialisten ist das Buch - mit uberwaltigendem Anmerkungsapparat

• als Standardwerk uber

Alessandro Benedetti zu betrachten. Dem interessierten Leser bietet es einen interdisziplinaren Einblick in

die Welt der italienischen Renaissance. In der Fahigkeit, punktuelle Textanalyse mit breitem kulturhistori

schem Ausblick zu vereinigen, laBt sich die Schule von Carlo Ginzburg nicht verleugnen.

Ugo D 'Orazio, Berlin

Bernhard Dietrich Haage: Alchemie im Mittelalter. Ideen und Bilder - von Zosimos bis Paracelsus. Artemis

& Winkler Verlag, Zurich und Dusseldorf 1996, 285 Seiten, 59 Abbildungen, mehrfarbiger Schutzum

schlag, DM 78.-.

Der Autor verfiigt als Germanist und Medizinhistoriker iiber stupende Kenntnisse im Bereich der kultur

geschichtlichen Wurzeln von Medizin und Naturwissenschaft. So gelingt es ihm, den in der hellenistischen

Naturphilosophie, in spatantiken Mysterienkulten und kosmischen Heilserwartungen grundenden facetten

reichen Schatz alchemistischer Symbole und Bilder zu entschlusseln, von dem die mittelalterliche abendlan

dische Alchemie ausging.
Nach einem informativen AbriB iiber die Theorie und Praxis mittelalterlicher Alchemie (S. 9-62) werden

die einzelnen Entwicklungsetappen mit ihren Innovationen differenziert dargestellt: Die Anfange im helleni

stischen Agypten (S. 63-109), die Alexandrinische und Byzantinische Alchemie (S. 110-113), die Arabische

Alchemie (S. 114-142) und die Alchemie im europaischen Mittelalter (143-200). Die Quellenangaben fin

den sich in Anmerkungen. Zu den Uberlieferungen ist im Anhang eine Sammlung alchemistischer Texte

vorhanden (Textausgaben S. 237-240). Hieran schlieBt sich ein umfangreiches Verzeichnis zur bisherigen

Alchemie-Forschung an (S. 241-157). Ein Sach- und ein Namenregister erleichtern das Wiederfinden des

Gelesenen und gezieltes Nachschlagen. Die plastischen Schilderungen des Entwicklungsverlaufs werden durch

Abbildungen aus dem arabischen und abendlandisch
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()

Journal r r l ' lhc Wilshinglon Academy ol' Scicnccs.
Volumc 84. Numhcr 3, Pages 168-178. Septcmhcr 1996

A Translation of a Zosimos' Text in an
Arabic Alchemy Book

H. S. El Khadem

The American University, Department of Chemistry, Washington D.C. 20016

Received February 13, 1996

ABSTRACT

In a recent paper (El Khadem 1995). it was reported that an Arabic translation of a Greek
text by Zosimos was found in a copy of a book entitled "Keys of Mercy and Secrets of
Wisdom," written by the twelveth century alchemist Al-Tughra'i. Reported here is a descrip-
tion of this rare book, which has recently been added to the Library of Congress' Near East
Section collection.

Tughra'i, Author and Translator

The copy of "Keys of Mercy and Secrets of Wisdom" under consideration
was written in two parts designated, "Part One, Introduction" by Al-Tughra'i",
and Part Two, "From Keys of Wisdom by Zosimos" translated to Arabic by
Al-Tughra'i. The author and translator's full name is Mu'ayed-ul-Din Abu Ismail
Ibn Al-Hassan Ibn Ali Al-Tughra'i. He was born in 1062 A.D. in the city of
Asbahan in Persia and was later appointed "Katib" (secretary) in the court of
the Seljuq Sultan Malik-Shah and that of his successor, Sultan Muhammad.
Because of his skills in calligraphy, he was assigned the duty of affixing the
royal signature "Tughra" to the sultan's writs (hence his name, which means
the writer of Tughras). After several years, Tughra'i moved to Mosul in Iraq
where he was appointed Vizir to Emir Ghiyat-ul-Din Mas'ud. When the Emir
died, uncertainty regarding his successor led to a palace revolt. Tughra'i sided
with the oldest son, Mas'ud, who subsequently lost the power struggle to a
younger brother, Mahmud. The latter, angered by his support of his brother,

Dr. H.S. El Khadem College of Arts and Sciences Department of Chemistry The American University 4400
Massachusetts Avenue N.W. Washington, D.C. 20016-8014

ZOSIMOS' TEXT 169

arranged to have him accused of heresy and then had him beheaded in the year
1121 A.D. Tughra'i's execution caused dismay among the learned community
in the region and prompted many publishers to delete all what they considered
controversial from his books.

Tughra'i was a statesman, an alchemist and a poet, considered by many as
one of the key literary figures of his time (see Nicholson 1941). The present text,
which according to an annotation on its title page, was also known as: "Key of
Mercy and Lantern of Wisdom" and "Key of the Treasures and Lantern of the
Symbol", has been cited by authors, such as Ullmann (1972), who lists it as
"Keys of Mercy and Lanterns of Wisdom", and Sezgin (1971) and Kraus (1943)
who list it as "Keys of Mercy". None of these authors, however, mentions that
this, or any other book by Tughra'i, contains a translation of a text by Zosimos.
A possible explanation of this absence is that the translation of Zosimos' text
was deemed sufficiently controversial to delete it from many copies of "Keys
of Mercy."

Zosimos:

Zosimos, the author of Part Two of the present text, was the most famous
alchemist of his time. He was a gnostic philosopher, born in the city of Panopolis
(present day Akhmim) in Southern Egypt around the year 300 A.D. He lived in
Alexandria, and traveled to many parts of the Hellenic world (see Read 1937,
and Hopkins 1967). Although Zosimos was a prolific writer, all his books have
been lost and what remains of them today are mere passages and quotes written
in the original Greek language, or translated to Syriac or Arabic. The Greek and
Syriac texts have been translated to French by Berthelot (1 885, 1888, 1893) and
discussed in detail by Halleux (1979) and Mertens (1990).

Arabic translations of Zosimos' work are listed by Sezgin (1971, p. 73) and
by Ullmann (1972, p. 160). They are also listed in the Arabic encyclopedia,
"Kitab al-Fihrist", published in Baghdad in 987 A.D., by Ibn A1-Nadim (1872).
In Section Ten of this book, Nadim gives the titles of four books authored by
Zosimos (see Flugel 1872); they are: "Keys of the Craft," by "Rimos," (its
title was translated by Berthelot 1888, p. 28) as "Keys of the Work"); "Keys
of Magic," by "Thosimos"; "The Book of Elements," by "Dosimos" and
"Book to All the Wise of the Craft" also by Dosimos. The inconsistency in
spelling Zosimos' name can be traced to two reasons: (a) Arabic vowels may be
deleted, altered, or transposed, according to certain rules, to render foreign names
easier to pronounce; (b) the pairs of Arabic letters "Ra" and "Za" that produce
the sounds "R" and "2," and "Dal" and "Thal," that produce the sounds

170 KHADEM

"D," and "Th" (as in "the") are identical in shape, except for a dot on top of
the second letter of each pair. A dot on the letter "Ra" changes it to "Za" and
a dot on "Dal," forms the letter "Thal,"
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Writings of Zosimos

Translated from the “Collection of the Ancient Greek Alchemists”

by M. Berthelot

III. i. - THE DIVINE ZOSIMOS
ON THE VIRTUE. [1] - LESSON I

1. The composition of the waters, the movement, the growth, the removal and restitution of the bodily
nature, the separation of the mind from the body, [2] and the fixation of the mind on the body ;
operations that are not the result of the addition of foreign natures and taken from outside, but which
are due to the unique, self-acting nature derived from a single species, as well as (the use) of hardened
and solidified ores and liquid extracts of plant tissue; all this uniform and polychromatic system
comprises the multiple and infinitely varied search for all things, the search for nature, subordinated to
the lunar influence and the measure of time, which regulate the term and increase according to which
nature is transformed. .

2. In saying these things I fell asleep; and I saw a priest standing in front of me at the top of a cup-
shaped altar. [3] This altar had fifteen steps to climb. The priest was standing there, and I heard a voice
from above saying to me: "I have accomplished the task of descending the fifteen steps, walking
towards the darkness, and the action of ascending the steps. , going towards the light. It is the priest
who renews me, rejecting the thick nature of the body. Thus ordained priest by necessity, I become a
spirit.

Having heard the voice of one standing on the cup-shaped altar, I asked him who he was. And he, in a
thin voice, answered me in these terms: "I am Ion, [4] the priest of the sanctuaries, and I suffered an
intolerable violence. Someone came hurriedly in the morning, and he abused me, slaying me with a
sword, and dismembering me, following the rules of the suit. He removed all the skin from my head,
with the sword he held (in hand); he mingled the bones with the flesh [5] and burned them with the fire
of the treatment. This is how I learned, through the transformation of the body, to become spirit. Such
is the intolerable violence (which I suffered).

As he was still talking to me, and I forced him to speak to me, his eyes became like blood, and he
vomited all his flesh. And I saw him (changed into) little counterfeit man, tearing himself up with his
own teeth, and sagging.

3. Filled with fear, I awoke and thought, "Is not this the composition of the waters? not. I was
convinced that I had understood correctly; and I fell asleep again. I saw the same altar in the shape of a
cup, and at the top, bubbling water and a lot of people there tirelessly. [6] And there was no one I could
question outside the altar. I go up to the altar to see this show. And I see a little man, a barber bleached
by the years, who says to me, "What are you looking at? I replied that I was surprised to see the
agitation of the skin and that of the burned and alive men. He answered me in these terms: "This sight
that you see is the entrance, and the exit, and the mutation". I asked him again:

What mutation? And he answered me: "This is the place of the operation called maceration; for men
who want to obtain virtue enter here and become spirits after having fled the body. So I said to him,
"And you are a spirit? And he answered me, "Yes a spirit and a guardian of spirits. During our
conversation, the boiling progressing, and the people uttering lamentable cries, I saw a man of copper,
holding in his hand a leaden tablet. [7] He told me the following words, looking at the tablet: "I
command all those who are subject to punishment to calm down, to each take a tablet of lead, to write

with their own hand, and to keep their eyes raised in the air and mouths open, until their harvest [8] is
developed. The act followed the word and the master of the house said to me, "You have contemplated,
you have stretched your neck upwards and you have seen what has been done." I answered him that I
saw, and he said to me: "The one you see is the copper man; he is the head of the priests and the
sacrificed, he who vomits his own flesh. Authority has been given to him on this water and on punished
people. "

4. After this apparition, I awoke again. I say to him: What is the cause of this vision? Is not this the
boiling white and yellow water, the divine water? And I found that I understood correctly. I say that it is
beautiful to speak and beautiful to listen, beautiful to give and beautiful to receive, handsome of being
poor and beautiful to be rich. Now, how does nature learn to give and to receive? The copper man gives
and the liquefied stone receives; the mineral gives and the plant receives; the stars give and the flowers
receive; the heaven gives and the earth receives; the thunderbolts give the fire that rises. In the altar in
the form of a cup, all things intertwine, and all dissociate: all things unite; all combine; all things
mingle, and all separate; all things are wet, and all are dried up; all things flourish and all are
deflowered. In fact, for each it is by the method, by the measure, by the exact weighing of the four
elements that the intertwining and the dissociation of all things is made; no bonding occurs without a
method. There is a natural method, to blow and to suck, to preserve the stationary classes, to increase
them and to diminish them. When all things, in a word, concord by division and union, without the
method being neglected in anything, nature is transformed; for nature, having turned back on itself, is
transformed: it is the nature and the bond of virtue in the entire universe.

5. In short, my friend, build a monolithic temple, like ceruse and alabaster, having neither beginning
nor end in its construction. That there is inside a source of very pure water, sparkling like the sun.
Carefully observe which side is the entrance to the temple and take a sword in hand; then look for the
entrance, because it is narrow ic place where is the opening. A snake is lying at the entrance, guarding
the temple. Get away from him; you will immolate it first; strip him, and taking his flesh and his bones,
separate his limbs; then gathering the limbs with the bones, at the entrance of the temple, make a
footstool, go up on it, and go in, and there you will find what you are looking for. The priest, this
copper man, whom you see sitting in the spring, gathering (in him) the color, does not look at him like
a man of copper; because he changed the color of his nature and he became a man of money. If you
want it, you'll get it soon (as a man of gold). [9]

6. This preamble is an entry destined to manifest to you the flowers of the discourses that will follow
(that is) the search for virtues, knowledge, reason, the doctrines of intelligence, the effective methods,
the revelations that clarify the secret words. Thus virtue pursues the whole, in its time and with method,

7. What do these words mean: "The triumphant nature of the natures o? And this? At the moment when
she is accomplished, she is dizzy?" and even:

o Tightened in research, she takes on the common face of the work of the

All, and it absorbs the proper matter of the species? And this: "then fallen outside (of) her first
appearance, she thinks she dies o? And this:

"When, speaking a barbarous language, she imitates the one who speaks the Hebrew language; then,
defending herself, the unhappy woman makes herself lighter by mixing her own limbs. "? And this !
The liquid set is matured by fire

8. Leaning on the clarity of these conceptions of intelligence, transforms nature, and considers multiple
matter as one. Does not clearly expose anyone to such property; but be on your own for fear lest by
speaking you destroy yourself. For silence teaches virtue, it is beautiful to see the mutations of the four
metals [lead, copper asem (or silver), tin], changed into perfect gold.

Taking salt, wets the sulfur, so as to bring the mass consistency honeycomb. Chains the strength of one
and the other; add rosacea to it and make it an acid, the first ferment of the white color, taken from the
rosacea. With these (substances) you will bring by degrees the tamed copper to the white appearance.
Distil by the fifth method, by means of the three sublimated vapors: you will find the expected gold.
This is how in taming the matter you obtain the unique species, taken from several species. [10]

III. ii. - THE LIME [11]
ZOSIME SAYS ABOUT LIME

1. I will make you (things) clear. It is known that the stone alabastron [12] is called brain, [13] because
it is the fixing agent of any volatile dye. Taking the stone alabastron, cook it one night and one day; add
lime, take some very strong vinegar, and boil; you will be astonished; for you will realize a divine
fabrication, a product that whitens the surface (metals) to the highest degree. Let it drop, then add
vinegar very hard, operating in a vase without lid, to remove the sublimated vapor, as it forms above.
Still taking strong vinegar, raise this steam for seven days, and operate until the steam no longer rises.
Leave for forty days the product (exposed) to the sun and the dew, at the appointed time; then soften
with rainwater. Dry in the sun, and preserve.

This is the uncommunicated mystery, which none of the prophets dared to divulge by word; but they
revealed it only to the initiates. They called it the encephalon stone in their symbolic writings, the non-
stone stone, the unknown thing that is known to all, the despised thing that is very precious, the given
and undelivered thing of God. [14] For me, I will greet it with the name of (stone) not given and given
of God: it is the only one in our work that dominates matter. Such is the preparation that possesses
power, the Mithraic mystery.

2. The spirit of fire unites with the stone and becomes a unique kind of spirit. But I will explain to you
the works of stone. Mixed with comedy, it produces pearls, and this is what has been called chrysolite.
The mind operates all things by the power of the dry powder. And I am going to explain to you the
word Comaris, which no one has dared to disclose; but these (the ancients) transmitted it to intelligent
people. It holds the feminine power, which one must prefer; for money-laundering has become an
object of veneration for every prophet.

I will also explain the power of the pearl. She performs her works, put in a decoction in the oil. She
represents the feminine power. Taking the pearl, you will put it in a decoction with oil, in an
unobstructed vase, without lid, for 3 hours, over a moderate fire. Taking a rag of wool, rub it against the
pearl, in order to remove the oil and hold, (the pearl available) for the purposes of the dyes; for the
fulfillment of material (transformation) takes place by means of the pearl.

2 bis. Stephanus [15] says: Take (the composite metal) of the four elements, (add the highest arsenic
[16] and the lowest, the rough and the red, the mile and the female, at equal weights, In the same way
that the bird broods its eggs and brings them to term in the heat, so you will cover and carry out your
work, [17] after having carried it outside, watered with the divine waters, exposed to the sun and in hot
places, after having cooked it on a gentle fire, by depositing it in virgin milk. [18] Beware of the

smoke, plunge the product into Hades; 19] [bring him out, sprinkle him with saffron of Cilicia, in the
sun and in hot places, cook on a low heat, with virgin milk, outside the smoke. 20]] Stir carefully, until
the mixture has become consistent, and can not escape from the fire, so take it (part of it), and when the
soul and the spirit has become unified (with the body) and form only one being, project on the metallic
body of money and you will have gold, as does not contain the treasures of kings.

This is the mystery of the philosophers, the one our fathers have sworn not to reveal or publish.

3. By elevation means the rise of flowers: [21] The water with which the product has been watered
rises and rises unhindered, as a result of the intimate association of the body with sulfur. [22] If not (the
body) stays at the bottom (of the sublimation vessel?) Let's just make the mortar and the filter for the
two dyes.

As for the copper, Zosime says about it: Altered by most waters, because of the humidity of the air and
the heat, it increases in volume and is covered with flowers, which are by far the most gentle ; it is
fruitful by the productive action of nature ".

III. iii. - AGATHODEMON,

After the refining of the copper and its blackening, then its subsequent whitening, then will take place
the solid yellowing.

III. iv. - HERMES

If you do not strip the bodies of their bodily nature and if you do not give a bodily nature to the
incorporeal beings, nothing that you expect will happen. [23]

III. v. - ZOSIME
LESSON II

1. Finally I was seized with the desire to go up the seven steps and see the seven punishments; and as it
should be, in one of the days (fixed), I made the road of the ascent. Repeating myself several times, I
traveled the road. When I returned, I did not find my way. Plunged into great discouragement, not
seeing how to get out, I fell asleep.

I saw during my sleep a certain little man, a barber dressed in a red robe and royal clothing, who was
standing outside the place of punishment, and he said to me: What are you doing there, O man? And I
said to him: "I stop here because I have gone astray from all directions, I find myself lost. He tells me
(then): Follow me. And I came and I followed him. As we were near the place of punishment, I saw the
one who guided me, this little barber, to engage in this place and his whole body was consumed by fire.

2. At this sight I went away, trembling with fear; Then I woke up and said to myself, What do I see?
and again I drew my reasoning to the light and I understood that this barber was the man of copper,
dressed in a red clothing, and I (me) say: I understood correctly, it is the man of copper . It must first be
engaged in the place of punishment.

3. Again my soul desired to ascend the third degree. And again, alone, I followed the path; and as I was
near the place of punishment, I went astray again, not knowing my way, and stopped desperate. And
again, similarly, I saw an old man whitened by the years, become quite white, blindingly white. His

name was Agathodemon. Turning around, this old man with white hair looked at me for an hour, And I
asked him: Show me the right way. He did not turn to me, but he hastened to follow his own path.
Going and coming, here and there, I hastened to the altar. When I came up on the altar, I saw the old
man with white hair go to the place of punishment. O demiurges of celestial natures! As it was
immediately ignited whole! What a terrible story, my brothers! Because, as a result of the violence of
punishment, his eyes filled with blood. I (spoke) and asked him: Why are you lying? But he, having
opened his mouth, said to me: I am the man of lead and I suffer an intolerable violence [24].
Thereupon, seized with a great fear, I awoke and I searched for myself the reason for this fact. I think
again and say to myself:

I understood correctly that we must reject lead; the vision really relates to the composition of liquids.

III. v - WORK OF THE SAME ZOSIME
LESSON III

1. And again I saw the divine and holy altar in the form of a cup, and I saw a priest clothed in a white
robe falling to his feet, and he was celebrating these fearful mysteries, and I said, What is this one? And
he answered me, He is the priest of the sanctuaries. He is the one who has the habit of bloodsheding the
bodies, making clairvoyant eyes and resurrecting the dead. So, falling again (on the ground), I fell
asleep again. While I ascended the fourth degree, I saw, on the east side, (someone) come, holding in
his hand a sword. Another, behind him, carried a circular object, of a brilliant whiteness, and very
beautiful to see, called Meridien du Cinabre. [25] As I approached the place of punishment, he told me
that he who held a sword should slice his throat, sacrifice his body and cut his flesh in pieces, so that
his flesh was first boiled in the apparatus, and that then they should be brought to the place of
punishment.

Having woken up again, I say to myself: I have understood correctly; they are liquids in the art of
metals. He who carried the sword still says You have completed the ascent of the seven degrees. The
other resumed, at the same time that it let dissolve the sinkers by all the liquids (?), [26] Art is
accomplished

III. vi. - THE DIVINE ZOSIME
ON VIRTUE AND INTERPRETATION [27]

1. To obey his inclination and to explain the dream he had made, [28] he said, I saw a cup-shaped altar;
an igneous spirit, standing on the altar, presided over the effervescence, the bubbling, and the
calcination of the rising men. And I inquired of the people that were standing, and said, I see with
astonishment the effervescence and the boiling; how are these men in ignition alive? And answering
me, he said to me: This effervescence that you see is the place where the maceration takes place. Men
who want to obtain virtue enter here; they lose their bodies (and) become spirits. Exercise (to virtue) is
explained by this because of the (word) exercise, [29] because, by rejecting the thickness of the body,
they become spirits.

2. Democritus says something similar: "Pursue the treatment until a yellow ios forms like the golden
color, arriving at the state of mind by means of the ios" Indeed ios from the substance deprived of body,
by the action of the serpent, signifies the spirit. [30] Because of the accomplishment of the yellow
coloring, the ios is called golden color, "This is how they pass their thought to them aloud and proclaim
it, until they are attained a uniform appearance. And he continues:

"Treat until you can run" - pouring comes from liquefaction and not extraction, because they change
the letter s in t. [31] He says, "Let it flow"; what he means of liquefaction, as we have explained. As for
his words: "Do the treatment, until you can make it flow"; this is equivalent to the word used earlier for
simultaneous flow. [32]

3. The expression of siderite, [33] name also used by those who are mentioned below, indicates, in
accordance with what it relates: the molybdochalque and the stone cesium.

Pyrite, a material used because of its coloring ability, after it has been burned or subjected to the action
of fire, means copper (derived from pyrite).

The word Argyrite is similarly used for the matter which remains after the expulsion of mercury; for
the copper freed from the excess of mercury becomes argyrite, [34] while the cesium stone is the
mercury itself, according to the true interpretation of all the operations (?). Indeed the departure of the
mercury announces the next appearance of the color of gold by the fire.

It says "siderite" because of the need to involve the combination of lead. Indeed, the combined
substances produce siderite. [35]

4. What is the heart of iron? When the mass is broken, as happens during this extraction - using the
words according to the analogies - we find the theory manifest, and it reveals the secret to us.

In other passages, Democritus says, "Practice treatment with brine supplemented with vinegar or urine,
or with both together." Hear from elsewhere (as you understand from the writing, or as the thing is
explained there), that the thing is possible by operating with other liquids; Since none of this remains
(in the preparation), these liquids are then discharged during washing of the composition.

5. It is on this subject that the ancient Ostanes, in his demonstrations, says: Someone tells this about a
certain Sophar, who lived previously in Persia. This divine Sophar expresses himself thus: "There
exists on a pillar an eagle of brass, [36] which goes down in the pure fountain and bathes there every
day, being renewed by this mode". Then he says: "The eagle, which we have interpreted, is used to
bathing every day." How, then, do you hear the same thing in another way, reject the ablution and the
daily washing? It is necessary (to explain) exactly about the present operation. Held in uncertainty
because of the (ambiguous) doctrine of the philosopher, we must however wash and rejuvenate the
copper eagle for 365 whole days; as it should be from the rest of his treatise, for Ostanès puts it this
way: Press the harvest. [37] Further down, he explains that this means [38] the flow wash; by this
mystery one must understand the ios. He adds, speaking very clearly: "Go to the current of the Nile;
you will find there a stone having a spirit; take it, cut it in half; put your hand in the interior and pull it
out of your heart: for his soul is in his heart. By the expression: "Go to the stream of the Nile, you will
find there a stone having a spirit"; it clearly designates the products washed by the currents (of water)
during the maceration of our stone. This is how all copper ore is used for the generation of metals, as
well as any lead ore. "You will find," he says, "that stone which has a spirit," which relates to the
expulsion of mercury.

6. It is for these reasons that my excellent (master), Democritus, distinguishes himself and says:
"Receive this stone which is not a stone, this precious thing which has no value, this polymorphous
object who has no form, this unknown who is known to all, who has several names and who has no
name: [39] "I mean the aphroselinon". For
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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/2451859X-00701001

Gnosis 7 (2022) 1–16

brill.com/gnos

Zosimos and Theosebeia
An Erotics of Alchemical Pedagogy

Shannon Grimes | orcid: 0000-0001-7764-8647
Meredith College, Raleigh, NC, USA
GrimesSh@meredith.edu

Abstract

This paper fleshes out the relationship of the third-century alchemist Zosimos of
Panopolis and his colleague, Theosebeia, which was later dramatized in the Book of
Pictures, an illustrated Arabic manuscript (thirteenth century) that depicts the cou-
ple crowned with the sun and moon, representing various alchemical processes. Their
relationship provides an important window into the historical development of erotic
themes in alchemical literature. I argue that there is an erotics of pedagogy at work in
this text, rooted in alchemical allegories of the fusion of male and female substances
and Islamic notions of the initiatory relationship between teacher and student.

Keywords

Zosimos of Panopolis – Theosebeia – alchemy – Book of Pictures – Muṣḥaf aṣ-ṣuwar

1 Overview of the Book of Pictures

Zosimos of Panopolis was an Egyptian priest and metallurgist who flourished
around 275ce; he is one of the best-known writers in the Greco-Egyptian
alchemical corpus.1 Many of Zosimos’s writings are in the form of letters to a
woman named Theosebeia. He advises her on both metallurgical techniques
and spiritual matters, which he insists are related endeavors, and draws on
Hermetic and Gnostic thought to expound his ideas to her. Some of his writ-

1 On dates for Zosimos, see Mertens 2002, xv–xvi.

2 grimes

Gnosis 7 (2022) 1–16

ings were translated from Greek into Syriac, and later into Arabic and Latin.2
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a Zosimean tradition of sorts devel-
oped among Muslim scribes, who wrote lengthy tomes featuring Zosimos and
Theosebeia as characters in dialogue, with Zosimos in the role of wise teacher,
and Theosebeia as his eager student of the alchemical arts.

One of these manuscripts, the Muṣḥaf aṣ-ṣuwar, or Book of Pictures, which
dates to 1270ce, is especially significant because it contains the earliest known
example of a series of illustrated allegorical images to represent alchemical
procedures.3 There are forty-two illustrations in the Book of Pictures,many fea-
turing Zosimos crownedwith the sun andTheosebeia crownedwith themoon,
depicting different aspects of the alchemical work. This visual format, in turn,
influenced European alchemists, who in the fifteenth through eighteenth cen-
turies produced several collections of illustrated alchemical allegories – many
of them depicting images of the solar king and lunar queen, sometimes in var-
ious stages of copulation.4

The Book of Pictures was discovered in 1955 by Fuat Sezgin in a manuscript
at the Library of the Istanbul Archeological Museums.5 Until the early 2000s,
scholars had written no more than a few paragraphs on it.6 A facsimile of the
illustrations with their captions was first published in 2007 by Theodor Abt, a
Jungiananalyst, and in 2011 he followedwith anEnglish translationof the entire
manuscript.7 BinkHallum,whose 2008 dissertation is on theArabic alchemical
literature featuring Zosimos, has pointed out several flaws with Abt’s historical
claims and Jungian interpretations of the material.8

For example, Abt claims that this is a Greek alchemical text, possibly written
anddrawnbyZosimos orTheosebeia, or students close to them, and later trans-
lated into Arabic.9 I concur with Hallum that this is not the case. Rather, the
Book of Pictures appears to be an original work byMuslim scholars that adapts
original material from Zosimos’s letters and presents it in new and creative

2 For a catalogue of these translations, see Mertens 2002, lxx–lxxxviii.
3 The manuscript dates to 1270ce, but an owner’s inscription says that it is a copy of an older

version, probably from the twelfth century. See Hallum 2008, 248, 262.
4 Famous examples include Aurora Consurgens (15th c.), Splendor Solis (16th c.), and Rosarium

Philosophorum (16th c.).
5 ms 1574. See Abt 2007, 12; Hallum 2008, 248.
6 Hallum 2008, 248.
7 Abt transcribes/translates the title of this manuscript as Muṣḥaf aṣ-ṣuwar/Book of Pictures,

whereas Hallum has Muṣḥaf al-ṣuwar/Tome of Images. I follow Abt’s rendering to be consis-
tent with the published editions of this work.

8 See Hallum 2009.
9 Abt 2007, 18–19; see also his lengthy response to Hallum’s critique in Abt 2011, 96–124.

zosimos and theosebeia 3

Gnosis 7 (2022) 1–16

ways. Nevertheless, I am grateful to Abt and his colleagues for publishing this
and other Arabic alchemical texts in their expanding Corpus AlchemicumAra-
bicum (cala) series; these are not critical editions, but they are doing impor-
tant work in making this material more readily available for study.

This paper begins with an introduction to Theosebeia and her relationship
with Zosimos as presented in his authentic letters; this historical overview pro-
vides necessary context for understanding how their relationship was later
imagined and dramatized in the Book of Pictures. In this work, Zosimos tells
Theosebeia that he drew these pictures to help her understand the alchemi-
cal operations he is explaining to her, which involve the combining of male
and female substances (such as gold and silver, or sulfur and mercury).10 He
uses allegories of weddings and sexual intercourse to describe these alchemi-
cal procedures, and though none of the drawings depict sexual activity, they
do depict Zosimos and Theosebeia in the role of the male and female sub-
stances described sexually in the text; thus, their teacher/student relationship
becomes another way of understanding this erotic attraction and blending of
substances. These erotics in the Book of Pictures pivot around the desire for
knowledge that is mutually shared by teacher and student; Zosimos instructs
Theosebeia how to sublime this desire, and this process mirrors the alchemi-
cal operation – the marriage of solar and lunar substances – that she seeks to
understand.

2 The Historical Zosimos and Theosebeia

Zosimos was an Egyptian scribal priest who was responsible for collecting,
translating, and compiling metallurgical recipes; he appears to have been an
overseer of temple metallurgists.11 It is much more difficult to pinpoint who
Theosebeia was and the nature of her relationship to Zosimos. In the Suda
entry on Zosimos (tenth century ce), Theosebeia is said to be his sister.12 Schol-
ars have speculatedonwhether theywere actually related, orwhether shewas a
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La Rosa di Paracelso 2/2019

Divine Images: Divine Images:

Zosimos of Panopolis’s Spiritual Approach to AlchemyZosimos of Panopolis’s Spiritual Approach to Alchemy**

Shannon Grimes, Meredith College

The works of Zosimos of Panopolis, a renowned Egyptian alchemist writing in
the latter part of the third century CE, are unique among the Greco-Egyptian al-
chemical corpus because he is the earliest writer to describe a spiritual approach
to alchemy in any depth. 1 A.-J. Festugière, who translated some of Zosimos’s
writings, dubbed him the “father of religious alchemy.”2 However, the fact that
his writings provide the earliest evidence does not necessarily mean that he was
the first to take this approach. Zosimos indicates that he was a scribal priest in-
volved with the production and consecration of divine statues and other ritual
objects; therefore, his profession is embedded in temple traditions that have a
long religious and technical history.3 If alchemy originated amongst Egyptian
temple metallurgists (and I am convinced that it did), then as a priest, Zosimos
is both a steward of these traditions and an innovator in the way he synthesizes
different metallurgical techniques and religious ideas into a more universal way
of thinking about alchemy.

In Roman Egypt, trade guilds were on the rise as temple economies declined;
metallurgists from these groups were collaborating and contracting with each
other.4 Zosimos’s writings suggest that he was an advisor to metallurgists from

* The author would like to thank editor Dr. Michele Olzi for sending her the call for papers for this
edition on alchemy, and for extending the deadline once COVID-19 hit.
1 On dates for Zosimos, see Michèle Mertens, Zosime de Panopolis: Mémoires authentiques, 2nd ed.
(Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002), xv–xvi. I will hereafter use Auth.Mem. as an abbreviation for this
text, which is a translation of some of Zosimos’s Greek works.
2 André-Jean Festugière, La Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gabalda, 1950),
260-62.
3 On Zosimos as scribal priest see Shannon Grimes, Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and
the Alchemical Arts in Roman Egypt (Aukland: Rubedo Press, 2018), 69-76; on alchemy’s roots
in Egyptian religious traditions of statue-making, see, for example, Phillipe Derchain, “L’atelier
des orfevres a Dendara et les origins de l’alchimie,” Chronique d’Egypte LXV (1990); and Aaron
Cheak, “The Perfect Black: Egypt and Alchemy,” in Alchemical Traditions: From Antiquity to the
Avant-Garde (Melbourne: Numen Books, 2013), 83-91.
4 Detailed discussions of the economic relationships between temple and trade guild metallurgists
in Roman Egypt can be found in Grimes, Becoming Gold, ch. 2; and Shannon Grimes, “Secrets of
the God-Makers: Re-thinking the Origins of Greco-Egyptian Alchemy,” Syllecta Classica 29 (2018).

La Rosa di Paracelso

70

both groups. He frequently complains that the ancient traditions he reveres are
getting corrupted by wrong-headed, greedy teachers, and he insists–even to met-
allurgists who aren’t in the priesthood–that spiritual purification and self-knowl-
edge is necessary for the proper execution of metallurgical procedures.5 This
paper is neither a comprehensive account of Zosimos’s priestly Sitz im Leben or
his religious teachings (which often blend Hermetic and Gnostic thought6), but
rather an attempt to explain why Zosimos insists that alchemy is both a spiritual
and technical undertaking, and why he thinks it should be practiced in this man-
ner even by metallurgists outside of the temples.

Using divine images as a theme, I begin by looking at the roots of alchemy
among temple artisans and Zosimos’s thoughts on the statues they are crafting.
Statues, of course, are one type of divine image, but even more important for
Zosimos is the inner work of realizing the divine image within the self. The last
section focuses more in-depth on this inner work by examining Zosimos’s theol-
ogy in On Apparatus and Furnaces (Letter Omega). This text contains his most
detailed discussion of divine images and illustrates how he conveys these spiritu-
al teachings to metallurgists who are unaffiliated with the temple. As I will show,
Zosimos’s priestly training is influential, and contributes to his belief that efforts
to “know thyself,” which lead to divine understanding, is the very same path that
leads to knowledge of the cosmos and the natural world.

Alchemy and statue-makingAlchemy and statue-making

Many Greco-Egyptian alchemical recipes are for coloring metals, which
matches up with recent discoveries about coloring techniques used in ancient
Egyptian metallurgy. It was known that polychromy was a distinctive feature of
Egyptian metal statuary, but scholars had been unable to detect it because of
the natural patinas and corrosion that color metals over time; however, since the
early 2000s, new developments in microscopy and X-ray analysis have made it

5 See, for example, Marcellin Berthelot and Rubens Duvall, La Chimie au Moyen Age, Vol. II.
(Reprint, Osnabruck: Otto Zeller, 1967 [1893]), 7.30-31; 9.28-29; 11.21. This text, which includes
Duvall’s translations of Zosimos’s works in Syriac, will hereafter be abbreviated as CMA. All ex-
cerpts here are from Volume II of this 3-volume work.
6 On Egyptian priests as teachers and authors of the Hermetic tradition, see Christian Bull, The
Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom
(Leiden: Brill, 2018). Gnosticism is a contested category among scholars of early Christianity. How-
ever, I find it useful as a descriptor of the type of metaphysics exemplified in the Nag Hammadi
manuscripts. I capitalize “Gnostic” and related terms when referring to the Christian and Jewish
varieties that flourished during the Roman period, especially in Egypt. For overviews of debates
over the category “Gnosticism,” see David Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in
Early Christianity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); and April D. DeConick, “Gnostic
Spirituality at the Crossroads of Christianity: Transgressing Boundaries and Creating Orthodoxy,”
in Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies Building on the Work of Elaine Pagels, ed. E. Iricinschi, et
al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013).

Divine Images: Zosimos of Panopolis’s Spiritual Approach to Alchemy

71

possible to identify the subtle, intentional uses of color by the artists.7 In his text
On Copper, Zosimos gives recipes for several tinctures used in coloring statues,
imparting hues of purple, red, coral
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ACADEMIE INTERNATIONALE
D'HISTOIRE DES SCIENCES

ARCHIVES
INTERNATIONALES

D'HISTOIRE
DES SCIENCES

Estratto dal n. 142Vol. 49/1999

ISTITUTO DELLA ENCICLOPEDIA ITALIANA
JiONDATA DA GIOVANNI TRECCANI

I - ARTICLES

UNPROPITIOUS TINCTURES. Alch�my, Astrology & Gnosis According to Zosimos of Panopolis *
DANIEL STOLZENBERG **

Introduction

The Egyptian alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis was a pivotal figure in the history
of Greek alchemy. In his works alchemy was placed at the service of a mystical
religion aimed at spiritual gnosis, but its practical dimension remained a central
concern 1. Unlike his immediate successors, the commentators, for whom alchemy
became primarily a speculative endeavor centered on the exposition of texts 2,
Zosimos maintained an activ� interest in the performance of chemical operations.
Indeed, many of his works display a deep interest in the technology of furnaces and
apparatus and the minutiae of chemical recipes. Two of his treatises in which the
theme of spiritual salvation is most prominent, On the Letter Omega and The Final
Count, concern an alchemical product known as propitious tinctures (kairikai
baphai). This article examines Zosimos's views on these tinctures and their relation­
ship to his religious and philosophical convictions. The two treatises that serve as
the basis for this investigation complement one another, making it possible to piece

* I would like to thank William Newman, who introduced me to the mysteries of Zosimos in
his seminar on the history of alchemy at Indiana University, where this project began, and who
has been an invaluable guide in all matters alchemical. I also wish to thank Darrel Rutkin for
his philological assistance.

1 Zosimos is believed to have flourished around the late third and early fourth centuries A.O.
(See Michele Mertens, Le, alchimistes grecs, IV, Zosime de Panopolis: Memoires authentiques
[Paris: Les Belles Lettres, I 995], xii-xvi.) On the division of ancient alchemy into three
chronological stages - 1) alchemy as an art (technique without theory); 2) philosophical
alchemy (technique joined with theory); 3) alchemy as a mystical religion aimed at salvation
(with Zosimos as its exemplar) - see A. J. Festugiere, La revelation d'Hermes Trismegiste, 4 vols
(Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1944-1954), I, 218-219, and Ch. VII, passim.

2 See J. Festugiere, op. cit., I, 239; cf. Robert Multhauf, Prelude to Chemistry (New York:
Franklin Watts, Inc., 1966), 111-112.

** Department of History
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94 305-2024 (USA)

4 Daniel Stolzenberg
together a coherent picture of Zosimos's attitude towards the propitious tinctures

and the world-view that provided their context. This picture reveals that Zosimos

was adamantly opposed to alchemical methods that were dependent on the obser­

vance of astrologically propitious times.

The first part of this article attempts to define the nature of the propitious

tinctures by an analysis of On the Letter Omega and The Final Count. I show that

Zosimos distinguished between two methods for obtaining the product that he

designated by the term "propitious tinctures", one good and one bad. Only the bad

method was literally propitious, in the sense that it depended on propitious times

for success. The good method worked independently of such influern;es and

required a technical knowledge of furnaces and other apparatus, as well as spiritual

discipline. Zosimos's use of the term kairikai to designate the second kind of

tinctures, which did not depend on propitious times, has led to misunderstanding.

The interpretation presented here challenges those of Howard Jackson and W.

Gundel, both of whom have understood Zosimos's statements ahout the propitious

tinctures as evidence of the observance of favorable astrological times. The second

part of this article explains Zosimos's views on the propitious tinctures in terms of

philosophico-religious concerns about spiritual salvation. I argue that a Gnostic

world-view, which rejected all intercourse with powers considered agents of Fate,

motivated Zosimos to espouse an alchemy that was purged of elements dependent

on propitious times and demons. In The Final Count, the link between Zosimos's

Gnostic repudiation of the cosmic gods and his teaching concerning the propitious

tinctures takes a remarkable form: in order to demonstrate the difference between

the good and bad tinctures Zosimos invented a Gnostic myth about the origin of

an alchemical doctrine. The article concludes with a speculative coda, in which I

suggest that alchemy served Zosimos as a Gnostic equivalent of Neoplatonist

theurgy, a ritual praxis to assist the adept on the path to divine union without

involving evil cosmic powers.

1. Spiritual and demonic alchemy. The two propitious tinctures

Demons and propitious times

In his treatise, On the Letter Omega, Zosimos attacks rival alchemists who have

disparaged the book On Furnaces 3 because of what it says concerning propitious

tinctures.

3 In this passage Zosimos mentions both a book "on furnaces" and one "on furnaces and apparatus", presumably referring to the same treatise authored by an earlier alchemist, perhaps Maria the Jewess. See J. Fcstugiere, op. cit., I, 265, n. 1; Howard M. Jackson, Zosimos of
Panopulis: On the Letter Omega (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1978), 42, n. 10; M. Mertens, op.
cit., 63, n. 12.

Unpropitious Tinctures 5

The propitious tinctures [kairikai katabaphai 4] have brought ridicule upon
the book On Furnaces, lady. For many people, once they have acquired the
favor from their personal demon [idion daimonion] to succeed with these
tinctures, have ridiculed even the book On Furnaces and Apparatus as not
being true. And no argument, however much proof it offers, convinces them
that it is true; they do not admit it unless their personal demon [idios
daimon] itself tells them so - when it is transformed in the course of the
[changing] times [kronoi] of their fate and a maleficent one takes them over.
And so, when their art and all their success [eudaimonia] are frustrated, and
the same formulas [rhemata ], by chance turn out first one way and then the
opposite, then reluctantly, with dear proofs from their fate, they recognize
that there is some truth to it, even for those [formulas] they previously
thought highly of. 5

Zosimos is writing to his "sister", Theosebia, and warning her to avoid the
methods of certain alchemists whose practices he finds objectionable. These al­
chemists depend on the assistance of a personal demon to achieve the propitious
tinctures. When the times change, their demon becomes maleficent and their
efforts meet with failure, even though they employ the same formulas that formerly
occasioned success. Following this passage, Zosimos quotes Hermes who calls

"such people mindless, only marchers swept along in the procession of fate" 6•
Zosimos's description of the effect of demons and changing times upon the

propitious tinctures has been interpreted in astrological terms. Kairikos has the
general sense o{ 'timely' and can mean, as it does here, dependent on the propitious

4 The term katabaphai, meaning something like 'deep-tinctures' as opposed to the typical baphai,
'tinctures', is unusual. Mertens suggests that it refers to tinctures "''clans la masse' pat
opposition aux simples haphai, 'teintures (supcrfidellcs)"' and provides references to other uses
of the term in the Leyden Alchemical Papyrus (Mertens, op. cit., p. 62, n. 9). However, in
a fragment of another treatise attributed to Zosimos, the adepts of Agatho<lemon are said to
use the terms haphai and katahaphai to refer to the tinctures of silver and gold respectively
(A/ch. Gr., dt. n. 5, 207-208). In referring to propitious (kairikai) tinctures, Zosimos uses the
word katabaphai only in On the Letter Omega. 1n The Final Count, he uses the term baphai
(and often he uses kairzkai substantively with only an implied referent), though he seems to
mean the same proccs.s as in Omega. (In Chapter 11 of The Final Cou11/ [A/ch. Gr., 246]
Zosimos refers the reader to the treatise On the Leiter Omega fot further details on achieving
the baphai.) I translate both terms as 'tinctures'.

' On the Letter Omega (- Omega), 2. The text appears in M. Berthelot and C.E. Ruelle (eds),
Collection des anc1ens achimistes grec.r (Paris, 1888; repr. Osnabrtick, 1967) (- A/ch. Gr.),
228-235. Superior editions with translations and notes appear in Jackson (does not include the
complete text) and, especially, Mertens. Jackson's English text serves as the starting point for
most of the translations of Omega in this artide, with frequent alterations. I have also made
use of Mertcns's French translation (typicallv, where Mertens and Jackson differ significantly
I have followed Mertens), as well as that of Festugiere (I, 26}-273).

• Omega, 4.

6 Daniel Stolzenberg

time [kairos] 7• The notion that there are propitious times for succeeding in an
enterprise belongs to the theory of katarchai, an important branch of ancient
astrology with origins in popular beliefs about lucky and unlucky days
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La Rosa di Paracelso 2/2019

Divine Images: Divine Images:

Zosimos of Panopolis’s Spiritual Approach to AlchemyZosimos of Panopolis’s Spiritual Approach to Alchemy**

Shannon Grimes, Meredith College

The works of Zosimos of Panopolis, a renowned Egyptian alchemist writing in
the latter part of the third century CE, are unique among the Greco-Egyptian al-
chemical corpus because he is the earliest writer to describe a spiritual approach
to alchemy in any depth. 1 A.-J. Festugière, who translated some of Zosimos’s
writings, dubbed him the “father of religious alchemy.”2 However, the fact that
his writings provide the earliest evidence does not necessarily mean that he was
the first to take this approach. Zosimos indicates that he was a scribal priest in-
volved with the production and consecration of divine statues and other ritual
objects; therefore, his profession is embedded in temple traditions that have a
long religious and technical history.3 If alchemy originated amongst Egyptian
temple metallurgists (and I am convinced that it did), then as a priest, Zosimos
is both a steward of these traditions and an innovator in the way he synthesizes
different metallurgical techniques and religious ideas into a more universal way
of thinking about alchemy.

In Roman Egypt, trade guilds were on the rise as temple economies declined;
metallurgists from these groups were collaborating and contracting with each
other.4 Zosimos’s writings suggest that he was an advisor to metallurgists from

* The author would like to thank editor Dr. Michele Olzi for sending her the call for papers for this
edition on alchemy, and for extending the deadline once COVID-19 hit.
1 On dates for Zosimos, see Michèle Mertens, Zosime de Panopolis: Mémoires authentiques, 2nd ed.
(Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002), xv–xvi. I will hereafter use Auth.Mem. as an abbreviation for this
text, which is a translation of some of Zosimos’s Greek works.
2 André-Jean Festugière, La Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gabalda, 1950),
260-62.
3 On Zosimos as scribal priest see Shannon Grimes, Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and
the Alchemical Arts in Roman Egypt (Aukland: Rubedo Press, 2018), 69-76; on alchemy’s roots
in Egyptian religious traditions of statue-making, see, for example, Phillipe Derchain, “L’atelier
des orfevres a Dendara et les origins de l’alchimie,” Chronique d’Egypte LXV (1990); and Aaron
Cheak, “The Perfect Black: Egypt and Alchemy,” in Alchemical Traditions: From Antiquity to the
Avant-Garde (Melbourne: Numen Books, 2013), 83-91.
4 Detailed discussions of the economic relationships between temple and trade guild metallurgists
in Roman Egypt can be found in Grimes, Becoming Gold, ch. 2; and Shannon Grimes, “Secrets of
the God-Makers: Re-thinking the Origins of Greco-Egyptian Alchemy,” Syllecta Classica 29 (2018).

La Rosa di Paracelso

70

both groups. He frequently complains that the ancient traditions he reveres are
getting corrupted by wrong-headed, greedy teachers, and he insists–even to met-
allurgists who aren’t in the priesthood–that spiritual purification and self-knowl-
edge is necessary for the proper execution of metallurgical procedures.5 This
paper is neither a comprehensive account of Zosimos’s priestly Sitz im Leben or
his religious teachings (which often blend Hermetic and Gnostic thought6), but
rather an attempt to explain why Zosimos insists that alchemy is both a spiritual
and technical undertaking, and why he thinks it should be practiced in this man-
ner even by metallurgists outside of the temples.

Using divine images as a theme, I begin by looking at the roots of alchemy
among temple artisans and Zosimos’s thoughts on the statues they are crafting.
Statues, of course, are one type of divine image, but even more important for
Zosimos is the inner work of realizing the divine image within the self. The last
section focuses more in-depth on this inner work by examining Zosimos’s theol-
ogy in On Apparatus and Furnaces (Letter Omega). This text contains his most
detailed discussion of divine images and illustrates how he conveys these spiritu-
al teachings to metallurgists who are unaffiliated with the temple. As I will show,
Zosimos’s priestly training is influential, and contributes to his belief that efforts
to “know thyself,” which lead to divine understanding, is the very same path that
leads to knowledge of the cosmos and the natural world.

Alchemy and statue-makingAlchemy and statue-making

Many Greco-Egyptian alchemical recipes are for coloring metals, which
matches up with recent discoveries about coloring techniques used in ancient
Egyptian metallurgy. It was known that polychromy was a distinctive feature of
Egyptian metal statuary, but scholars had been unable to detect it because of
the natural patinas and corrosion that color metals over time; however, since the
early 2000s, new developments in microscopy and X-ray analysis have made it

5 See, for example, Marcellin Berthelot and Rubens Duvall, La Chimie au Moyen Age, Vol. II.
(Reprint, Osnabruck: Otto Zeller, 1967 [1893]), 7.30-31; 9.28-29; 11.21. This text, which includes
Duvall’s translations of Zosimos’s works in Syriac, will hereafter be abbreviated as CMA. All ex-
cerpts here are from Volume II of this 3-volume work.
6 On Egyptian priests as teachers and authors of the Hermetic tradition, see Christian Bull, The
Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom
(Leiden: Brill, 2018). Gnosticism is a contested category among scholars of early Christianity. How-
ever, I find it useful as a descriptor of the type of metaphysics exemplified in the Nag Hammadi
manuscripts. I capitalize “Gnostic” and related terms when referring to the Christian and Jewish
varieties that flourished during the Roman period, especially in Egypt. For overviews of debates
over the category “Gnosticism,” see David Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in
Early Christianity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); and April D. DeConick, “Gnostic
Spirituality at the Crossroads of Christianity: Transgressing Boundaries and Creating Orthodoxy,”
in Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies Building on the Work of Elaine Pagels, ed. E. Iricinschi, et
al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013).

Divine Images: Zosimos of Panopolis’s Spiritual Approach to Alchemy

71

possible to identify the subtle, intentional uses of color by the artists.7 In his text
On Copper, Zosimos gives recipes for several tinctures used in coloring statues,
imparting hues of purple, red, coral-pink, yellow, black, white, blue, gold, and
silver to the metals.8 “How moving it is to admire the invention of these arts,”
he proclaims, “how beautiful is the sight!”9 He takes pride in his work, claiming
that the coloration is so vivid and the form so perfect that when people see the
statues, they are frightened and believe they are living beings.10 Experiencing
fear and awe before a divine statue was considered a pious response, so Zosimos
seems to be indicating that the artisans had achieved their desired goal.11

The statues were brought to life, as it were, by a ritual called the “Opening
of the Mouth,” which rendered the statues capable of receiving divine pres-
ence. It took place in a temple workshop called the House of Gold, where the
finishing touches were put on the statues; only higher-ranking artisan priests
were allowed to perform and witness these rites.12 Zosimos alludes to this ritual
in his alchemical allegory On Excellence, and as an artisan priest and overseer
of metallurgists, it is possible that he was involved in its performance.13 This
ritual was also performed on mummies as a means of rendering the corpse
serviceable to the soul in the afterlife so that it could travel to the heavens and
return to the physical body for nourishment when needed.14 This animating
ritual, then, provided a vital link between matter and spirit; the god animates
the statue as the spirit animates the body.

There is some ambiguity in Zosimos’s discussion of statues, however, that
needs to be addressed. In On Copper he mentions making figurines of several
popular gods, including Agathodaimon, the Nile, Fortune, and Mother Earth, as

7 Élisabeth Delange, “The Complexity of Alloys: New Discoveries About Certain ‘Bronzes’ in the
Louvre.” in Gifts for the Gods: Images from Egyptian Temples. ed. M. Hill and D. Schorsch (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 39. For a technical description of some of the initial studies
of Egyptian polychrome statues, see also Susan LaNiece, et al., “Polychromy and Egyptian Bronze:
New Evidence for Artificial Coloration.” Studies in Conservation 47, 2 (2002).
8 See CMA, Syr. II.6.9 ff.
9 CMA, Syr. II.6.30. All translations are mine, based on Duval’s French translations of the Syriac,
unless otherwise noted.
10 CMA, Syr. II.6.31.
11 On fear before statues, see Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the
Many, trans. J. Baines (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982),197; and R.K. Ritner, The Mechan-
ics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago,
1993), 24.
12 See, for example, Derchain, “L’Atelier des Orfevres;” David Lorton, “The Theology of Cult
Statues in Ancient Egypt,” in Born in Heaven, Made on Earth: The Creation of the Cult Image in
the Ancient Near East, ed. M. B. Dick (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 147-179; and Jan
Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, trans. D. Lorton (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2005), 310-329.
13 On Zosimos’s priestly status as a scribal and/or artisan priest and overseer of metallurgists, see
Grimes, Becoming Gold, 71-76; and Grimes, “Secrets of the God-Makers,” 74-75.
14 In mortuary contexts, this ritual was performed in the entrance to the tomb of the deceased. See
Emily Teeter, Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011),
139-145.

La Rosa di Paracelso

72

well as other ritual figurines, like serpents, fruit, and animals, and he concludes
his list with: “and the image of those things which contribute to the error and il-
lusion of duped individuals.”15 He goes on to say, “I scorn the disciples of Neilos
who were admiring things unworthy of admiration; they were indeed ignorant,
and we directed their attention to the saying ‘know thyself’–the very saying they
did not admire.”16 This passage comes directly after the aforementioned one
where Zosimos expresses admiration for the beautifully colored statues, so his
objections aren’t entirely clear. Was it an unnamed image that caused offense?
Or was he referring to all the images in the list? There is a marginal note on this
page, probably by a Christian or Muslim scribe, which refers to statues as “idols”
and calls an artisan whom Zosimos praises in the text an “imposter”17; therefore,
it is possible that the statement about these images leading to error and illusion is
a scribal interpolation.18 But if instead this is an accurate rendering of Zosimos’s
words (the language and attitude does seem consistent with his), then perhaps he
had some misgivings about how these statues were being viewed or used.

Beginning in the classical period, Greek thinkers classified images as belong-
ing to the realms of eikōna (icons) or eidō
The file is too long and its contents have been truncated.

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Zosimos Aigyptiakos. Identifying the Imagery
of the “Visions” and Locating Zosimos of

Panopolis in His Egyptian Context
Zosimos Aigyptiakos. Identificando las imágenes

de las “Visiones” y localizando a Zósimo de
Panópolis en su contexto egipcio

Abstract
�e first alchemist for whom we have

biographical data, Zosimos, lived in the
Panopolis (current Akhmim) of the late 3rd
– early 4th cent. CE, a region in which evi-
dence of the practice of traditional Egyptian
religion is attested well into Late Antiquity.
�e images that Zosimos employed in his
presentation of alchemical procedures and
apparatus offer us an insight into his cul-
tural context. �is paper will examine a
series of passages from the works of Zosi-

Marina Escolano-Poveda

University of Liverpool
m.escolano-poveda@liverpool.ac.uk

Resumen
El primer alquimista para quien tenemos

datos biográficos, Zósimo, vivió en la Panó-
polis (actual Akhmim) de finales del siglo
III y comienzos del IV d.C., una región en la
que se atestiguan evidencias de la práctica de
la religión egipcia tradicional bien entrada la
Antigüedad Tardía. Las imágenes que Zósimo
empleó en su presentación de procedimien-
tos e instrumental alquímicos nos abren una
ventana a su contexto cultural. Este artículo
examinará una serie de pasajes de las obras de

https://doi.org/10.20318/arys.2022.6793 - Arys, 20, 2022 [77-134] issn 1575-166x

78

Keywords
Dendera; Egyptian Iconography; Graeco-

Egyptian alchemy; Hermetica; Khoiak Festi-
val; Lunar Cycle; Mummification; Mysteries
of Osiris; Visions; Zosimos of Panopolis.

Palabras clave
Alquimia grecoegipcia; Ciclo lunar; Den-

dera; Festival de Khoiak; Iconografía egipcia;
Misterios de Osiris; Momificación; Textos
herméticos; Visiones; Zósimo de Panópolis.

Fecha de recepción: 18/02/2022 Fecha de aceptación: 25/07/2022

mos of Panopolis from an Egyptological
perspective, contrasting them with textual
and iconographic sources from the Egyp-
tian temple milieu of Graeco-Roman Egypt.
�e results of this inquiry will be used to
elaborate a more nuanced presentation of
Zosimos’ identity.

Zósimo de Panópolis desde una perspectiva
egiptológica, contrastándolos con fuentes tex-
tuales e iconográficas del entorno de los tem-
plos egipcios del Egipto grecorromano. Los
resultados de esta indagación serán usados
para elaborar una presentación más matizada
de la identidad de Zósimo.

Marina Escolano-Poveda

Arys, 20, 2022 [77-134] issn 1575-166x

79

1. Searching for the Origins of Alchemy1

�e student of the origins of alchemy is faced by two main challenges. �e first one
derives from the nature of the early alchemical sources, and the second one from
the modern scholarly tradition that has undertaken their study. �e earliest alchem-
ical sources that have come down to us give very few insights about their historical
context.2 �ey are collections of recipes written in Greek and preserved on a series
of papyri, as well as copies of treatises in later manuscripts.3 �ese papyri were cre-
ated in Egypt, and the treatises contain a wealth of references to Egyptian elements.
While their Egyptian context was acknowledged by the scholarly community early

1. �e research and writing of the present paper were completed during a Research Fellowship from
the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Institut für die Kulturen des Alten Orients (IANES) of
the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen between the years 2019 and 2021. I want to wholeheartedly
thank my host, Prof. Dr. Christian Leitz, for providing me with excellent research resources as well
as for his expert advice and encouragement, and my colleagues at IANES, and especially Dr. Carolina
Teotino-Tattko, for a friendly and stimulating research environment. I would also like to thank the two
anonymous reviewers from ARYS for their very useful comments.

2. �e only two alchemical manuscripts that have come down to us from Graeco-Roman Egypt are
the so-called Leiden (P.Leiden I 397) and Stockholm (P.Holm) papyri, which are two codices dating to
the 4th cent. CE. For a recent edition, cf. Halleux, 2002. �e fact that both these manuscripts and the first
21 pages of PGM XIII were written by the same hand shows that the practice of alchemy and that of the
procedures recorded in the spells of the Graeco-Egyptian magical formularies took place in the same
context and was done by the same people.

3. On the transmission of alchemical treatises in Byzantine manuscripts, cf. Martelli, 2019, pp. 11-43,
with references.

Zosimos Aigyptiakos

Arys, 20, 2022 [77-134] issn 1575-166x

80

on,4 these texts have not received much attention from Egyptologists.5 �ey have
been studied mainly from a Classics point of view, and thus framed in a Hellenic
rather than Egyptian context. In this paper, I examine one of the main works by the
first alchemist for whom we have some reliable biographical information: Zosimos of
Panopolis.6 While we have few details about his life, a close analysis of his works may
reveal interesting aspects of his historical and cultural context. One of the difficulties
of this task lies in the fact that Zosimos employed an allegorical language to describe
his procedures, and delighted in the use of Decknamen, secret names, which later
would become common in alchemical literature. However, as Lawrence Principe has
noted, “Zosimos surely drew upon his own experience and knowledge of contempo-
raneous religious rites for imagery to use in this allegorical sequence. His language of
altars, dismemberment, and sacrifice surely reflects something of late Greco-Egyp-
tian temple practices”.7

2. On Zosimos and the “Visions”

According to most sources, Zosimos was born in the city of Panopolis, present
Akhmim, in Middle Egypt,8 and seems to have later lived in Alexandria. He also

4. Festugière already located the early recipes in the context of the Egyptian temples, cf. Festugière,
2014, p. 220.

5. Some attempts have been made at identifying and interpreting the Egyptian elements in alchemical
texts, cf. especially Daumas, 1983, and Derchain, 1990, and some sections of Fowden, 1986. Lindsay,
1970 takes a more Classics-focused approach (I discuss this work in more detail in section 2). Quack,
2006a, pp. 280-281 analyzes some of the Egyptian elements and context in Pseudo-Demokritos’ Physika
kai mystika (on which cf. excursus in section 5 in the present paper). For an analysis of Grimes, 2018,
and Roberts, 2019, cf. section 2, below.

6. For introductions about Zosimos of Panopolis, cf. Fowden, 1986, pp. 120-126; Mertens, 2002; Prin-
cipe, 2013, pp. 15-24; Dufault, 2019, pp. 93-117; Martelli, 2019, pp. 73-86. For the latest edition and
translation of his Authentic Memoirs, cf. Mertens, 1995. Martelli is currently preparing a complete edi-
tion of the Syriac Zosimos. For the Arabic Zosimos, cf. Hallum, 2008a.

7. Principe, 2013, p. 19.
8. On the available information about Zosimos’ life, cf. Mertens, 1995, pp. xii-xix. Akhmim is located

close to Nag Hammadi, where Gnostic and Hermetic treatises were copied and hidden between 340 and
370 CE. �e orthography of some Greek words has led Mahé to propose a dating of the second half of
the 3rd century or the beginning of the 4th cent. CE for their composition, which would make them con-
temporary of Zosimos (Mahé, 1978, p. 11). On the context of the Nag Hammadi codices, and potential
connections between the circle of Zosimos and those who produced the codices, cf. Bull, 2020, esp. pp.
142-143.

Marina Escolano-Poveda

Arys, 20, 2022 [77-134] issn 1575-166x

81

appears to have taken a trip to Memphis in order to inspect a furnace in a temple.9
He lived around the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th cent. CE, and thus was
roughly contemporary with authors such as Iamblichos, and probably part of the
same philosophical environment.10 He appears to have written twenty-eight books
about alchemy, some of which he addressed to �eosebeia, who may have been a dis-
ciple of his and perhaps his patron;11 this may also be just a literary device common
to the dialogical character of these texts.12 �ey are preserved in Greek Byzantine
copies and one Syriac manuscript.13 �ese works, in contrast to the previous recipe
collections, “witness a coherent program of research that draws on both material
and intellectual sources”.14 Zosimos’ works describe diverse instruments and tech-
niques, crediting their origin to their creators, and present the process and results of
his experiments incorporating his thoughts and impressions.

�e focus of this paper will be the so-called “Visions” of Zosimos, which are
contained in a treatise entitled Περὶ ἀρετῆς. Περὶ συνθέσεως ὑδάτων (“On Virtue.
On the Composition of the Waters”).15 �is treatise presents a series of alchemical
procedures in an allegorical way, employing imagery that has been the object of dis-
cussion by scholars from many different perspectives. Michèle Mertens, author of the
most recent edition and translation of the text, has summarized in her commentary
the main two interpretative approaches originally taken on it.16 One approach was
mainly represented by Marcellin Berthelot and Charles-Émile Ruelle, who considered
the text purely as a description of various chemical procedures (distillation, sublima-

9. Cf. Fowden, 1986, p. 120. Fowden notes here that a visit to Rome that appears in the so-called Book
of Zosimos (Zos. Pan., fr. syr. 299-302) is actually a translation of Galen, the identification of which some
scholars have failed to make, attributing it to Zosimos.

10. For the Hermetic and Gnostic context of Zosimos, cf. Mertens, 2002, and Fraser, 2007. On the
possibility of Zosimos’ being Christian, cf. Dufault in this volume, 135-170. For an Egyptological
approach to Iamblichos’ De mysteriis, cf. Escolano-Poveda, 2020a, pp. 225-236, and bibliography there,
esp. Quack, 2017.

11. Cf. Dufault, 2019, pp. 118-141.
12. Zosimos’ address to �eosebeia is reminiscent of Plutarch’s address to Klea in his De Iside et

Osiride. On �eosebeia cf. Hallum, 2008b.
13. For the manuscript tradition of Zosimos, cf. Mertens, 1995, pp. xx-lxxxvi.
14. Principe, 2013, p. 15.
15. In this analysis I use Michèle Mertens edition of Zosimos’ Mémoires authentiques (Mertens, 1995).
16. Mertens also lists in her commentary to Mém. auth., X a series of editions of the text apart from

that of Berthelot and Ruelle (CAAG I, II, III), and discusses its presentation as a series of revelatory
dreams in the context of the first centuries of the current era, connecting it with other compositions such
as Corpus Hermeticum I or �essalos’ De virtutibus herbarum. Cf. Mertens, 1995, pp. 207-211.

Zosimos Aigyptiakos

Arys, 20, 2022 [77-134] issn 1575-166x

82

tion, cupellation) in mystical terms.17 �e second approach was that of Carl G. Jung,
who published several works on the “Visions”, considering them as real dreams, and
interpreting their images as archetypes (“mythologemes”).18 As Mertens has noted,
this approach is not tenable for a proper understanding of Zosimos’ treatises, since it
draws parallels not only from historical periods much later than Zosimos’ time, but
also from many different places and context, with no connection to the Egypt of the
end of the 3rd cent. CE.19 Mertens suggests that a middle point, that considers both the
technical character of the texts, but also explores their symbolic elements, is possible.
In her commentary, she discusses both aspects, connecting Zosimos’ text to literary
parallels.20 �ese parallels, however, are only derived from sources written in classical
languages. Other authors have also approached the “Visions”, analyzing them in the
light of the religious and philosophical context of Zosimos’ time. Dufault explores
how the procedures described in them may represent Zosimos’ soteriological con-

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ZOSIMOS OF PANOPOLIS AND THE BOOK OF ENOCH:
ALCHEMY AS FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

KYLE A. FRASER

1. Introduction

The Chronographia of George Synkellos, the 9th century Byzantine chro-
nicler, preserves a curious fragment from the alchemist and Hermetic philoso-
pher, Zosimos of Panopolis. In this passage, which is not extant in the Greek
alchemical manuscripts, Zosimos seems to lend his support to a dark and
unwholesome view of the alchemical art and its origins.

It is stated in the holy scriptures or books, dear lady, that there exists a race of
daimons who have commerce with women. Hermes made mention of them in
his Physika; in fact almost the entire work, openly and secretly, alludes to them.
It is related in the ancient and divine scriptures that certain angels lusted for
women, and descending from the heavens, they taught them all the arts of nature.
On account of this, says the scripture, they offended god, and now live outside
heaven—because they taught to men all the evil arts which are of no advantage
to the soul1.

These ‘ancient and divine scriptures’ to which Zosimos refers are no doubt
the ancient Hebrew scriptures, specifically the Book of Enoch. Zosimos
implies that Hermes knew this ancient Hebrew work, and made reference to
its teachings about fallen angels in his ‘physical writings’ ( physika)2. Although
the Book of Enoch never attained canonical status for Jews or Christians, it
was a formative influence in the world of Hellenistic Judaism, especially
within those messianic and apocalyptic currents from which Christianity
eventually emerged. Indeed, the book was widely read and circulated through-
out the Hellenistic world in the first three centuries CE. The Synkellos fragment

1 George Synkellos, Ecloga Chronographica (ed. A.A. Mosshammer), 14.4-11. Though this
passage does not appear in the Greek alchemical corpus, there are close parallels in a 15th cen-
tury Syriac manuscript. For a discussion of the parallels see Mertens, Alchimistes Grecs, Tome
4, LXX-LXXVIII.

2 These physical writings are not extant: everything that we know about the “Hermetic” view
of alchemy (which is very little) has been reconstructed from references in Zosimos and the
later commentators, like Olympiodoros. For a discussion of the evidence see Festugière, Révélation
I, 240-256.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2004 Aries Vol. 4, no. 2

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126 KYLE A. FRASER

attests to this wider sphere of influence: Zosimos knows the book, and seems
to endorse its teachings, as evidently does his Hermetic source.

The writings of Zosimos express a high regard for the Jewish alchemical
tradition, in particular for Maria, to whom Zosimos appeals as his chief
authority in questions of alchemical apparatus and technique3. More gener-
ally, we see the influence of gnostic currents connected to developments
within—or on the fringes of—Late Antique Judaism. Thus it is not surpris-
ing that Zosimos should refer to the Book of Enoch as sacred scripture.
R. Patai describes an Arab tradition, according to which Zosimos was actu-
ally regarded as a Jewish author. He claims that the evidence does not per-
mit us to determine whether this tradition is based on fact or fancy4. In reality,
it seems certain that Zosimos was not a Jew. In one passage, he clearly
identifies himself as part of the Egyptian tradition, as distinct from the Jewish
tradition: ‘Thus the first man is called Thoth by us, and Adam by those peo-
ples’5. Elsewhere he speaks of Jewish alchemists as imitators of Egyptian
alchemy6. In short, while Zosimos does regard Jewish alchemy as a genuine
initiatory tradition, which has transmitted important alchemical wisdom, he
also insists that it is derivative of the Egyptian tradition, to which he him-
self belongs. His reverence for Maria and Jewish alchemy, and his interests
in esoteric Judaism, are best explained as reflecting the cosmopolitan out-
look of an Alexandrian philosopher. It is in terms of this syncretic outlook—

3 The passages from the corpus of Zosimos relating to Maria are collected and discussed by
Patai, Jewish Alchemists, ch. 6. However, this source should be used with caution. Patai bases
his translations directly on the French translation of Berthelot, which in turn is based on the
often unreliable Greek text established by Ruelle. See also note 6 infra.

4 Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 56.
5 On the Letter Omega 9, 87-88, in Mertens, Alchimistes Grecs Tome 4. See also the edition

of Jackson, Zosimos of Panopolis, On the Letter Omega.
6 ‘Thus the Jews, imitating [the Egyptians] (hoi Ioudaioi autous mimêsamenoi), deposited

the opportune tinctures in their subterranean chambers, along with their secrets of initiation . . .’,
Final Quittance 5.26-27, as edited by Festugière, Révélation I, appendix 1, 363-368. Raphael
Patai claims that for Zosimos ‘the Jews’ knowledge of alchemy was greater and more reliable
than that of any other people, including even the Egyptians’ (p. 12). But this assertion is based
on a faulty translation of the opening lines of The True Book of Sophe the Egyptian. Following
the edition of Berthelot-Ruelle, Patai reads: ‘There are two sciences and two wisdoms: that of
the Egyptians and that of the Hebrews, which latter is rendered more sound by divine justice’
(Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 52). Though the Greek is admittedly tortuous, this is an implausible
reconstruction. Much better is Festugière’s suggestion (Révélation I, 261, note 2), which Patai
evidently does not know: ‘The true book of Sophe the Egyptian and the God of the Hebrews,
Lord of the Powers, Sabaoth (for there are two sciences and two wisdoms, that of the Egyptians
and that of the Hebrews), is more solid than divine justice’. The reference to the two sciences
is parenthetical, and that which is ‘more solid than divine justice’ is just the Book of Sophe
itself.

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ALCHEMY AS FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE 127

this confidence in the esoteric unity of all ancient traditions—that we should
understand Zosimos’s appeal to the Book of Enoch, which he regards as hav-
ing an essential affinity to the “physical” teachings of the Egyptian sage
Hermes Trismegistus. In the same syncretic spirit he makes the fabulous
claim that Hermes was sent by the high priest of Jerusalem to translate the
Hebrew scriptures into Greek and Egyptian—a claim that would be impos-
sible within a strictly Jewish context7.

According to the Enochian account, a race of fallen angels, called the
Watchers, revealed the arts and sciences to humans:

And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days
were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the chil-
dren of the heaven, saw and lusted after them (1 Enoch 6.1-3) . . . And all the
others together with them took unto themselves wives . . . and they began to go
in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms
and enchantments (7.1-2) . . . And Azazel taught men to make swords, and
knives . . . and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of work-
ing them . . . and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures . . . Baraqijal
(taught) astrology, Kokabel the constellations . . . Araquiel the signs of the earth,
Shamsiel the signs of the sun . . . And as men perished, they cried, and their cry
went up to heaven (8.1-4). . .8.

In exchange for their revelations, the lustful angels had intercourse with
human women and bred through them a race of giants. The Book of Enoch
recounts this forbidden exchange of sex for wisdom with a view to explain-
ing the origins of human sinfulness, which from the author’s point of view
has reached epidemic proportions in his own time. In the catalogue of the
various forms of knowledge revealed to nascent humanity, the occult
sciences—magic, astrology, and divination—are front and center. There is
no explicit mention of alchemy9. However, the reference to ‘tincturing’ (1
Enoch 8.2) might well have signaled to Zosimos that alchemy is implied10.

7 On the Letter Omega 8.82-86 (Mertens). Festugière emended Hermên (‘Hermes’) to her-
mênea, ‘interpreter’ (Révélation I, 268 n. 5). However, as Jackson (Zosimos of Panoplis, 48,
n. 42) and Mertens (Alchimistes Grecs Tome 4, 5, n. 56) argue, the reference to Hermes—though
impossible in a strictly Jewish context—makes sense within an Egyptian-Hermetic perspective
that is appropriating Jewish materials.

8 Book of Enoch, trans. R.H. Charles, in id., Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, 191-193.
9 However, one Ethiopic manuscript adds, ‘transmutation of the world’ after the reference

to ‘tinctures’ at 1 Enoch 8.2. E. Isaac, in a more recent translation, interprets this expression as
a reference to alchemy: ‘And Azaz’el taught the people . . . all coloring tinctures and alchemy’
(Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 16, with note 8 [d]). Although this is an inter-
pretation, it is not implausible in the context.

10 The Greek Enochian fragments actually use the expression ta baphika, ‘colouring tinctures’,

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128 KYLE A. FRASER

For Zosimos, as we shall see later, alchemy is fundamentally concerned with
the tincturing of base metals, a process which he interprets as a purification,
a ‘baptism’. From his perspective, this Enochian reference to ‘tincturing’,
which occurs in close proximity to a catalogue of occult sciences, would no
doubt have seemed like a reference to alchemy. Indeed, Chêmeia is, for
Zosimos, the very essence of this angelic revelation, as he goes on to explain
in the Synkellos quotation:

These same scriptures also say that from them [sc. the angels] the giants were
born. Their initial transmission about these arts came from Chêmes. He called
this book the Book of Chêmes, whence the art is called Chêmeia (Ecloga, 14.
11-14).

The word “alchemy” is, of course, unknown to the Greek alchemists. It trans-
lates an arabic word, alkimiya, a combination of the article al and a sub-
stantive kimiya. Scholars have proposed two main alternatives as to the origins
of the arabic word, kimiya: they derive it either from Chêmia, the Greek
word for Egypt or the “Black-land” (Egyptian, Kmt); or from the Greek
chûma, which is related to the verb for “smelting” (choaneuein). Our Zosimos
fragment lends weight to the first alternative: the sacred science is Chêmeia,
the art related to Chêmia, the Egyptian “black-earth”11. The idea of “black-
earth” has a twofold significance: it points us to the presumed Egyptian ori-
gin of the Art, and it represents symbolically one of its chief concepts—prime
matter, the black substrate of alchemical transmutation12. Adding his own
fanciful etymological touch, Zosimos links Chêmeia with a mythical figure
named Chêmes, who is evidently one of the gigantic offspring of the fallen
angels and their human wives. This giant, he tells us, recorded the revela-
tions of the angels in the Book of Chêmes, in which form they were trans-
mitted to the earliest alchemical initiates. In this way, Zosimos appropriates
the Enochian story and expands it into an explicit account of the origins of
his own sacred art, Chêmeia.

which accords perfectly with the alchemical sense of tincturing as baptism. See Festugière,
Révélation I, 223, nt. 2.

11 For a full discussion of the possible etymology see Lindsay, Origins of Alchemy, 68ff. For
the connection of the Greek word Chêmia to the Egyptian Kmt see Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris,
364c6-8 (trans. J. Gwyn Griffiths): ‘Again, they call Egypt, since it is mostly black, Chêmia . . .’.
The related word Chêmeia, as Lindsay observes (o.c., 69), belongs to a series of words termi-
nating in -eia, which denote arts or occupations (e.g. mageia, as the art of the magos). Presumably,
then, Chêmeia is the distinctive art connected to Chêmia.

12 For this point see Festugière, Révélation I, 218.

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ALCHEMY AS FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE 129

The Book of Enoch views the occult sciences and technology in general
as responsible for the moral corruption of humanity: ‘And the whole earth
has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him
ascribe all sin’ (1 Enoch 10.8-9)13. This assessment was widely influential,
especially for the early Church Fathers. Tertullian, for one, takes up the
Enochian story with enthusiasm, even improvising a clever analogy between
the fall of the lustful angels and the historical “fall” of certain magicians and
astrologers who were persecuted and driven out of Rome: ‘The astrologers
are expelled just like their angels. The city and Italy are interdicted to the
astrologers, just as heaven to their angels’14.

Roman law was highly unfavourable to the occult sciences—with the obvi-
ous exception of official cult practices, such as haruspicium. Tacitus speaks
of the death penalty for magicians as an ‘ancient custom’15. Under the Lex
Cornelia, as interpreted through the Pauli Sententiae (3rd century CE), magi-
cians were to be publicly burnt, or exiled, depending on their social status.
Suspicion of “magic”, in the Roman legal discourse, was construed as the
practice of private or clandestine religious rites, unsanctioned by the official
state religion16. Thus the early Christians were commonly regarded by edu-
cated Romans, like Celsus, as magicians, who engaged in secret diabolical
rites. After all, the Christians refused to participate in the official Roman
cults, embracing and reinforcing their alien status in the Empire. Moreover,
the claims of the Christians themselves to heal the sick and exorcise dai-
mons were adduced as evidence of sorcery and diabolism: ‘Since these men
do these wonders, ought we to think them sons of God? Or ought we to say
that they are the practices of wicked men possessed by an evil daimon?’17.
In the face of such criticism, the early Fathers, like Tertullian, were anxious

13 However, as K. von Stuckrad argues, 1 Enoch does not regard knowledge as such as the
root of evil, but the revelation of divine knowledge to those who are unfit and unprepared to
receive it (Das Ringen um die Astrologie, ch. 6, section 1.2). The revelation of the fallen angels
(1 Enoch 6-11) stands in sharp contrast to the revelations of the holy angel Uriel (1 Enoch 72-
82), which Enoch is charged to pass on secretly to his descendants. Clearly the implication is
that divine knowledge should be kept secret—reserved for the righteous—since it is dangerous
in the wrong hands.

14 Tertullian, On Idolatry, trans. in Thelwall, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, 65. Cf. Tertullian,
On the Apparel of Women, in Thelwall, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, 14-16.

15 Tacitus, Annalium 32.11-15 (ed. C.D. Fisher).
16 For a close examination of magic as “illicit religion” see Kippenberg, ‘Magic in Roman

Civil Discourse’. On the Pauli Sententiae, see p. 149; on secrecy, see p. 150ff. ‘The departure
of magic from official religion came about precisely because of the practice of secrecy, that
turned an official religious ritual into a magical one’ (p. 155).

17 Origen (quoting Celsus), Contra Celsum, Bk. 1, ch. 68 (trans. H. Chadwick).

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130 KYLE A. FRASER

to distinguish the acts of Christians, which derived their efficacy from the
name of Christ, from the acts of magicians, which were allegedly effected
through the agency of daimons.

These accusations of illicit religious practices—“magic” in its rhetorical
and polemical usage—worked both ways. Once Christianity became the
official state religion, the Christians were able to deploy the same rhetorical
categories in their persecution of the pagan cults, eventually outlawing them
altogether. St. Augustine, in his City of God, rejects the attempts of the
Neoplatonists to distinguish between theurgy and magic. The rites of theurgy,
he says, are fraudulent (ritibus fallacibus). The theurgists believe that they
are attaining unity with angels and gods, when in fact they are unwittingly
sacrificing to evil daimons, disguised as angels (sub nominibus angelorum)18.
Magic—that is to say non-Christian ritual—is for Augustine linked to the
influence of hostile daimonic powers, as in the Book of Enoch. Ironically,
Augustine’s position makes use of material drawn from Porphyry’s criticism
of theurgy, allowing Augustine to employ a divide and conquer strategy. The
rhetorical oppositions between theurgy and magic, or illicit and licit religious
practices, are operative within Neoplatonism itself. Porphyry accuses the
theurgists of attempting to manipulate and entice the gods with incantations
and sacrificial vapours. Like Augustine, Porphyry worries that the true objects
of theurgic rites may be daimons disguised as divinities19. How then can
divine theurgy be clearly and safely distinguished from daimonic magic?
Iamblichus’s response to Porphyry, though it sheds much light on the char-
acter of theurgy, works largely within the same polemical categories: theurgy
raises us to the gods, whereas magic attempts to draw the gods to us; theurgy
invokes the gods through the appropriate, natural receptacles, whereas magic
constructs artificial receptacles, like idols, through which to contain and
manipulate divine powers20.

18 City of God X.9 (Trans. David S. Wiesen).
19 In his Letter to Anebo, Porphyry implies that theurgists are confused about the nature of

the gods, since they seem to hold that immaterial gods are attracted by material sacrifices
(Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 211.19-212.3, ed. des Places). In On the Abstinence of Animal Food
he goes further: the true objects of blood sacrifices are daimons, disguised as divinities. He
holds that the pneumatic bodies of daimons are replenished by the sacrificial smoke, a view
which Zosimos also holds—and with great anxiety—but which Iamblichus rejects (see note 36
infra). For further discussion see especially Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 129ff.

20 Iamblichus distinguishes sacred visions attained through theurgy from the residual phantasms
artificially produced through sorcery (apo tês goêteias technichôs, De Mysteriis 160.15-18, ed.
des Places). Likewise, he distinguishes theurgy from the animation of statues, which is also
effected through magical artifice (technikôs 170.9). For further discussion see Shaw, Theurgy
and the Soul, 38-39.

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ALCHEMY AS FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE 131

In short, the charge of “magic” was part of a rhetorical strategy employed
by Christians, Hellenes and Jews alike, sometimes against one another and
sometimes against rival factions or schools within their own religious tradi-
tions. One important aspect of this polemical use of the category “magic”,
evident also in the Book of Enoch, is the notion that magic, wittingly or
unwittingly, works through the wrong powers, through daimons or fallen
angels, to the ultimate enslavement and destruction of the magician21. Seen
in this context, Tertullian’s appropriation of the Enochian story makes good
rhetorical sense. It allows him to legitimate the Christian religion in contra-
distinction to other “false” or “illicit” religions.

What is perhaps more difficult to understand is the fact that some alchemists,
including Zosimos, were also sympathetic to this account, which seemed to
play so neatly into the hands of their detractors, and potential persecutors. It
is the main purpose of this paper to explore the alchemical appropriation of
the Enochian story, with particular emphasis on Zosimos.

Is the Synkellos fragment consistent with the surviving works of Zosimos?
How can such a negative view of the origins of alchemy be reconciled with
its status as a divine art? I shall argue that the fragment is intelligible when
interpreted within the wider context of Zosimos’s works on alchemy. In two
of his more theoretical works, On the Letter Omega and the Final Quittance,
Zosimos develops a distinctive daimonology, rooted in Gnosticism. Accord-
ing to this gnostic daimonology, the daimons who inhabit the upper regions
of the world are the earthly ministers of the planetary rulers—the gnostic
archons—who determine the Fate of the individual and of the whole physi-
cal cosmos. These archons and their daimonic servants are intent on main-
taining the ignorance and enslavement of fallen humanity. The goal of alchemy,
for Zosimos, is liberation of the spiritual part of the human from the bonds
of matter and Fate—from the clutches of the archons and their daimons.
However, alchemy cannot simply ignore these forces, or wish them away:
as a form of “theurgy”22, alchemy works directly with material substances,

21 Fritz Graf identifies this topos as one of two prevailing strategies for defining “magic” in
a monotheistic context: ‘One [way] is to assume that the sorcerers make use of negative super-
human beings which coexist with God, those pagan gods who have now been unveiled as evil
demons and who either are or are not identical with the fallen angels of Jewish tradition . . .’
(‘Theories of Magic in Antiquity’, 104). The other way of distinguishing magic from religion,
which Graf associates especially with Plotinus, stresses intentionality and the manipulation of
natural bonds of sympathy and antipathy (o.c., 100-104).

22 Of course, “theurgy” in the strict sense refers specifically to the ritual practices of the
Chaldean Oracles, which were further developed by Iamblichus and his followers. My sug-
gestion here is not that alchemy is identical to this Chaldean theurgy, only that it implies a simi-

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132 KYLE A. FRASER

and seeks salvation through a spiritual regeneration of matter. Alchemy works
through the world—a world ruled by hostile daimonic powers. How, then,
does the alchemist engage with matter, without falling prey to the daimonic
and astrologic forces which rule over it? There is a danger that the alchemist
may become obsessed with the material ends of the art, seduced by the dai-
mons and their false promises. Does the alchemist require the assistance of
these daimons and the observance of astrologically propitious times? Or does
alchemy proceed entirely on natural principles? In working through these
problems Zosimos articulates a distinction between two kinds of alchemy:
one profane, the other sacred; one aimed at the material ends of transmuta-
tion, the other aimed at a spiritual “baptism”; one utterly enslaved to dai-
mons, the other a means of salvation. Zosimos joins Enoch in condemning
profane alchemy, while insisting on the integrity of the true Hermetic Art.
Thus he too deploys the rhetorical categories of licit and illicit religion, and
his reasons for appropriating the Enochian story turn out not to be so dif-
ferent from Tertullian’s: both employ the Enochian myth to legitimate their
religious and ritual practices, in distinction from their spiritual competitors.

2. Consider the Source: Angels, or Demons in Disguise?

Scholars have long noted a connection between the Book of Enoch and the
Graeco-Egyptian alchemical tract Isis the Prophetess to her son Horos. In
this pseudonymous tract, Isis recounts to Horos the details of her initiation
into the alchemical mysteries by Amnael, angel of the sun:

In accordance with the opportune celestial moments (tôn kairôn), and the nec-
essary revolution of the heavenly sphere, it came to pass that a certain one of
the angels who dwell in the first firmament, having seen me from above, was
filled with the desire to unite with me in intercourse. He was quickly on the
verge of attaining his end, but I did not yield, wishing to inquire of him as to
the preparation of gold and silver. When I asked this of him, he said that he was
not permitted to disclose it, on account of the exalted character of the myster-
ies, but that on the following day a superior angel, Amnael, would come . . .

lar valuation of the material world and its ritual utility. As Shaw argues, on the theurgic view
‘[e]ven the densest aspects of matter . . . were potential medicines for a soul diseased by its
body, and the cure for a somatic fixation in this theurgic homeopathy was the tail of the (dai-
monic) dog which bound it’ (Theurgy and the Soul, 47). Likwise, alchemy, as Zosimos under-
stands it, works through matter to rise above matter. This ritual engagement with matter involves
a degree of tension given Zosimos’s concerns about the daimons and archons who rule over the
material world. Iamblichus, by contrast, has a more positive view of the daimons (for further
discussion see Shaw, 130ff).

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ALCHEMY AS FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE 133

The next day, when the sun reached the middle of its course, the superior angel,
Amnael, appeared and descended. Taken with the same passion for me he did
not delay, but hastened to where I was. But I was no less anxious to inquire
after these matters. When he delayed incessantly, I did not give myself over to
him, but mastered (epekratoun) his passion until he showed the sign on his head
and revealed the mysteries I sought, truthfully and without reservation (Berthelot
p. 29.2-11, 16-23)23.

These lustful angels are associated with the heavenly spheres, and with the
astrologic conception of “opportune times” as defined by the positions of the
planets relative to one another and to the signs of the zodiac. The question
as to what extent alchemical procedures are dependent upon these kairoi, or
opportune astrological moments, is also of central interest for Zosimos, as
we shall see. The angels in the Isis tractate represent, more precisely, the
sympathetic astral forces of the moon and the sun, which are implicated in
the production of silver and gold respectively, the very mysteries which Isis
is anxious to acquire. First, the angel of the “first firmament”, the moon,
descends on Isis; but his advances are rejected, as he will not, or cannot,
reveal the mysteries of gold and silver. As the moon is associated with the
making of silver, one may reasonably speculate that the lunar angel is inad-
equate to the higher mystery of gold, which only the appropriate and supe-
rior angel can reveal, namely the solar angel. This angel, Amnael, descends
at the meridian, when the sun is at its highest power, with the same lustful
agenda as his lunar predecessor. Isis must resist his advances—master his
passion—until he offers up the secrets promised.

The tension between the erotic or “sympathetic” intentions of Amnael and
the antipathetic resistance of Isis is a crucial, though subtle aspect of the
account. The language of “mastery” (epikratein, 29.20) suggests the famous
maxim of Pseudo-Demokritos, quoted later in the tract: ‘For nature rejoices
in nature, and nature conquers nature’ (30.18-19)24. The suggestion seems to

23 For the Greek text of this tract see Berthelot, Collection des Anciens Alchimistes Grecs,
vol. II, 28-33. The text established by Ruelle is based on Paris 2327 f. 256r, collated with vari-
ant readings from Paris 2250 f. 217r. The connection to the Book of Enoch is discussed briefly
by Festugière, Révélation I, 255-256.

24 See the Physika kai Mystika of Pseudo-Demokritos (i.e. Bolos of Mendes), edited in
Berthelot, Collection des Anciens Alchimistes Grecs, vol. II, 41-53. In this tractate, “Demokritos”
tells of the discovery of a secret book, concealed by his master Ostanes in a temple column. In
this book the famous maxim was revealed, which reads in full: ‘Nature rejoices in nature; nature
conquers nature; nature dominates (kratei) nature’ (43.20-21). Variants of this maxim appear
throughout the alchemic corpus. Note the analogy between the notion of nature dominating
(kratei) nature, and Isis’s mastery (epikratein) of Amnael’s passion. The alchemist must bal-
ance natural sympathies and antipathies. At the start of the work she must cause dissonant sub-

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134 KYLE A. FRASER

be that the alchemist must have dealings with daimonic or angelic powers
that are sympathetic to the Work and necessary to its “opportune” execution;
and yet these powers must for some reason be held at bay, and mastered—
prevented from overwhelming the work. Indeed these angelic forces are of
a dubious character. Their descent from the planetary spheres in which they
properly reside can be taken in two very different senses.

On the one hand, this descent signals the mediating role of the angel or
daimon as an earthly conduit for planetary influences. It was a common philo-
sophical view in the time of Zosimos that daimons are the earthly adminis-
ters of Fate or heimarmenê, a view clearly expressed, for instance, in tractate
XVI of the Corpus Hermeticum:

When each of us has been born and ensouled the daimons that are responsible
for the administration of birth at that moment take charge of us—the daimons
which are ordered under each of the planets (C.H. XVI, 15) . . . They accom-
plish the whole of this earthly administration through the instrument of our bo-
dies; and this administration Hermes called Fate (tautên de tên dioikêsin Hermês
heimarmenên ekalesen) (XVI, 16)25.

In the Platonic-Stoic syntheses of Late Antiquity, of which Hermetic phi-
losophy is one current, the idea of mediating daimons is central. As the philo-
sophical conception of the divine becomes increasingly transcendent, the
need for hierarchy and mediation increases accordingly. For later Platonists,
like Plutarch, the idea of intermediate daimons provides a means of recon-
ciling mythic and cultic perspectives on the divine, with more transcendent
philosophical conceptions. The daimons execute all of the earthly functions
of the gods: they animate statues, provide oracular guidance, and oversee
theurgic rites26.

The descent of the angels in our Isis tractate can be interpreted in just this
way, as the execution of the cosmic function of mediation. However, as
administrators of Fate, responsible in particular for maintaining the gene-

stances to coalesce in the primordial mixture, or prime matter. It is this harmony of the natures
that Ostanes failed to reveal to “Demokritos” before his death (42.22-25). In another way,
however, this harmonization or blending is also a dissolution of the distinct natures of the var-
ious substances, their reduction to primordial “blackness”. This dissolution is effected through
the application of reagents like mercury, sulphur and vinegar. Once the “black” mixture has
been attained, then there is a process of differentiation, expressed through the successive stages
of “tincturing”, i.e. whitening and yellowing.

25 I follow the Greek text established by Nock & Festugière, Hermès Trismégiste, Corpus
Hermeticum vol. II.

26 See Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum, ch. 13; in Plutarch’s Moralia, trans. F.C. Babbit.

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ALCHEMY AS FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE 135

siurgic link between souls and bodies27, the cosmic role of the daimons is
often regarded with an air of menace, especially in the Gnostic systems.
Plutarch explains that the daimons, as intermediate beings, have a share of
divinity, but their divine nature is conjoined with a soul and a body, capa-
ble of perceiving pleasure and pain. Consequently, the daimons, like humans,
are moved by appetite, and are capable of both good and evil28. Viewed in
a positive light, the daimons seem to constitute our link to the divine, bridg-
ing the distance between the earthly and the heavenly; viewed in a negative
light, they can be regarded as responsible for the incarnation of our souls,
and so for maintaining our enslavement to materiality and Fate.

This ambivalence about the moral character and motivation of daimons
is reflected in the Isis tractate. If we look to the actual motivation of the
angels, their descent from the spheres seems not to represent a normal cos-
mic function at all, but an aberration and a perversion. It seems, in other
words, to constitute a “fall” in the Enochian sense. These angels are the
guardians of esoteric truths, forces sympathetically aligned to the Work of
silver and gold; but their sympathetic attraction to the Work takes the form
of carnal lust, which moves them to depart from their proper seats in the
celestial firmament.

Isis for her part seems not to be bothered by the lustful motivation of her
angelic teacher, Amnael. There is certainly no indication of a moral judg-
ment; and this constitutes an important divergence from the Enochian model,
with its emphatic condemnation of the angels. For Zosimos, however, the
moral implications of the Enochian account, and the forbidden nature of the
angelic lust, are impossible to ignore. He seems to agree with the condem-
nation of Enoch: the arts which these angels revealed to humans, he says,
are ‘evil and of no advantage to the soul’ (Synkellos, 14.10-11). Yet, para-
doxically, he concedes that his own sacred art, Chêmeia, was the fruit of this
forbidden union.

Alchemy, as conceived by Zosimos, takes on an explicitly redemptive
character, in line with the spiritual aims of the mystery schools and the Gnostic
and Hermetic initiatory traditions. Whether such a conception is already
implicit in the earlier Isis tract is arguable; but for all of its talk of initiation
and esoteric truths, there is no explicit reference to the spiritual ends of

27 See Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 67.15-18 (des Places, Les Mystères d’Égypte): ‘It is neces-
sary to reserve for daimons the generative powers, which govern nature and the connection of
souls to bodies’ (tou sundesmou tôn psychôn eis ta sômata).

28 Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, 360d13-e23 (trans. J. Gwyn Griffiths).

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136 KYLE A. FRASER

alchemy, nor to any deeper meaning attaching to the production of silver and
gold. For Zosimos, by contrast, the spiritual interpretation is front and center:
the goal of alchemy is the liberation of the spiritual Adam from the bonds
of carnality imposed upon Him by the rulers of the sublunary world, the
gnostic archons. Within this spiritual interpretation, the idea of the daimonic
origins of alchemy becomes a deep problem. The daimons or angels, who
reveal the liberating gnôsis to Isis, are themselves subject to the very carnal
desires that alchemy seeks to overcome; indeed these beings are the very
type of a spiritual being which has fallen into material embodiment.

According to the account of the spiritual Anthropos in the Hermetic
Poimandres, a work evidently familiar to Zosimos29, the fall into matter is
precipitated by lust. Poimandres, the “shepherd”, is the first Nous, creator of
the Demiurgic Nous and the Anthropos. The Anthropos is thus conceived as
the very brother of the Demiurge, prior to the seven planetary archons, and
superior to them in dignity. His fall begins when he takes on the powers of
the archons. As a result of absorbing their demiurgic powers, the Anthropos
is inspired to try his own hand at creation. He breaks through the heavenly
spheres into the sublunary world, where he falls victim to a form of narcis-
sism. He sees his beautiful form reflected in Nature and is drawn into her
embrace:

The Anthropos, seeing a resemblance of his form in her [sc. Nature], fell in love
and desired to make a home there. Immediately his wish was made actual, and
he came to dwell in form devoid of reason. Nature, having received the object
of her love, engulfed him utterly and they mingled in passion. For they were in
love (Poimandres 14)30.

The account points to lust and pride as fatal defects in the Anthropos, ori-
ginating from the influence of the archons. The result is his enslavement in
the world of fatality. There is in this account both a positive sense of the
dignity of the Anthropos as microcosm, containing all of the powers of the
universe, and an intimation of the dangers of pride and self-love. The lust-
ful fall of the Anthropos has resulted in the scattering of the divine Light in
matter; and it is the goal of alchemy to remedy this fall, by drawing out the
hidden Light, or solar potentiality of matter.

The lustful angels of the Book of Enoch and the Isis tractate seem to re-
present the spiritual fall into matter which it is the goal of the alchemic art

29 He seems to refer to this work at the close of The Final Quittance: see below pp. 18-19.
30 For the Greek text see Nock & Festugière, Hermès Trismégiste, Corpus Hermeticum Tome I.

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ALCHEMY AS FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE 137

to overcome. How then can they be understood as guardians of the liberat-
ing alchemic gnôsis? This problem, I shall argue, is inherent in the theoret-
ical position of Zosimos, and arises from his unique synthesis of Gnosticism,
daimonology and alchemy.

3. Daimonology and Alchemy in Zosimos

The tractate On the Letter Omega is evidently an introduction to a larger
work of Zosimos concerning alchemical furnaces and apparatus, which has
not survived in the manuscripts31. Omega is of great importance for under-
standing the Gnostic and Hermetic currents that influence Zosimos, and which
provide the theoretical and spiritual background to his interpretation of
alchemy. Particularly prominent is the influence of an “archontic” Gnosticism,
in which the astral rulers and their daimonic agents are conceived as hostile
to the human spirit, and as responsible for its continuing enslavement in the
world of Fate and corporeality32. This archontic Gnosticism, I shall argue,
has deep implications for Zosimos’s attitude towards astrological and dai-
monic influences in alchemy.

31 I follow the critical edition of Mertens, Alchimistes Grecs Tome IV, 1-10. Also useful is
Jackson, Zosimos of Panopolis. However, Jackson’s interpretation of the tractate is problem-
atic: he understands Zosimos to be endorsing ‘opportune tinctures’ and stressing the need for
astrologic considerations, a reading that turns the argument on its head. The Greek text of On
the Letter Omega is preserved only in the second recension of Marcianus 299. The full title in
the manuscript reads, Of the same Zosimos, Authentic Memoirs concerning Apparatus and
Furnaces. On the letter Omega. We do not possess the actual treatment of apparatus and fur-
naces, of which Omega is evidently the introduction, with the exception perhaps of a short
excerpt, also edited by Mertens (o.c., 23-25).

32 Zosimos blends conceptions from the Hermetica with an “archontic” Gnosticism, in the
vein of the Apocryphon of John. Contemporary scholars have attempted to differentiate these
Hermetic and Gnostic currents (which for Zosimos are clearly part of one framework) in terms
of “optimistic” and “pessimistic” gnôsis. While it is true that the Hermetica generally give a
more positive assessment of the natural world, and of the roles of the Demiurge and the archons,
it is misleading to suggest that they offer an “optimistic” conception of gnôsis. Clearly gnôsis
is required precisely because humanity is fallen, and requires salvation. The Hermetic Poimandres
is quite close in spirit to the so-called “gnostic” viewpoint, and there are many other allusions
in the Hermetic corpus to the negative features of embodiment. As Garth Fowden has argued,
the optimistic and pessimistic (or “monistic” and “dualistic”) attitudes to the material world
should be understood as reflecting different stages in the soul’s ascent to the divine (see Fowden,
Egyptian Hermes, 102ff). On the other hand, we shall find that the dualistic tendencies in
Zosimos, as reflected in his anxieties about embodiment and the daimonic ministers, are indeed
in a certain tension with his commitment to the material operations of alchemy—thus his con-
cerns about the role of daimonic and astrologic influences in the processes of tincturing.

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138 KYLE A. FRASER

In the opening of the work, Zosimos expresses frustration to Theosebeia
about a group of alchemists who have ridiculed a certain work on furnaces
and apparatus, which he evidently holds in high regard. Their reasons for
rejecting this technical work center around their commitment to a concep-
tion of ‘opportune tinctures’ (kairikai katabaphai, Omega 2.11-12), or tinc-
tures which are effected through the observance of propitious astrological
times. These men claim that the practical requirements laid down in the book
on furnaces are false and unnecessary, on the grounds that they have been
blessed by the daimons simply by observing the propitious times. They will
only concede their error when these astral forces, in which they have placed
all their trust, turn against them:

For many who have received from their personal daimon the favour to succeed
with these opportune tinctures have mocked the book “On Furnaces and
Apparatus”, claiming that it is false. And no demonstrative argument has per-
suaded them that it is true, unless their own daimon indicates this, when it has
changed in keeping with the changing moments of their Fate (kata tous chro-
nous tês autôn heimarmenês), and a malefic (kakapoiou) daimon has taken charge
of them. When all of their art and good fortune has been overturned . . . reluc-
tantly they concede, from this clear demonstration of their Fate, that there is
something beyond the methods which they previously entertained (2.13-24).

In their desire for immediate and easy results these alchemists eschew the
disciplines of laboratory work and give themselves over to Fate. They are
so fixated on the material ends of the art that they forget about the fickle-
ness of fortune—until disaster strikes.

This conception of Fate incorporates a mix of Stoic and Gnostic ideas.
For Zosimos, Fate and her daimonic administrators rule the human body and
the material ends of human life; and liberation from Fate can only be attained
through self-knowledge. The true philosopher or alchemist is liberated inwardly
from the cycles of pleasure and pain which Fate controls:

Hermes and Zoroaster maintained that the race of philosophers is superior to
Fate, because they neither rejoice in her blessings, for they are masters of plea-
sure; nor are they thrown by her evils, since they live an inner existence; nor
again do they welcome the beautiful gifts she sends, since they focus on the end
of evils (5.41-46).

Those alchemists who trust in the gifts of daimons, the messengers of Fate,
disclose their subservience to the desires of the flesh, and their failure to
grasp the spiritual ends of the alchemical art. They are as mindless as the
common lot of humanity, entirely lacking knowledge of their divine origin
and end.

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ALCHEMY AS FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE 139

Zosimos enters now into an extended account of the fall of the spiritual
Anthropos, explaining how humanity has become enslaved to the powers of
Fate. In the course of this account it becomes evident that Zosimos’s distrust
of the astrological dimensions of alchemic practice (as encapsulated in the
notion of ‘opportune tinctures’) is rooted in a gnostic conviction that the ru-
ling powers of the cosmos stand in a hostile, or at least ambivalent, relation
to the spiritual aims of the alchemist.

Zosimos tells us that the spiritual or luminous man, whom the Hebrews
call Adam, and the Egyptians Thoth, was tricked by the archontic ministers
of Fate into clothing himself in a corporeal Adam, composed of the four ele-
ments. As a result of this deceit, the light of the spiritual Adam became
trapped and divided in material bodies:

When Light (Phôs) was in paradise, pervaded by spirit (diapneomenos), they
[sc. the archons], in the service of Fate, persuaded him—who was without ma-
lice and powerless—to clothe himself in the Adam, which they had created from
Fate and the four elements. On account of his innocence he did not resist, and
they boasted because he had been reduced to slavery (11.104-109).

Zosimos speaks later of the salvific role of Jesus Christ, who instructed
humanity as to its spiritual nature and began to recollect the Light that had
been dispersed throughout matter (13.121-132). Working against the salvific
aims of Christ is a figure called the ‘counterfeit daimon’ (14.133), a jealous
entity that mimics the true God, seeking to maintain human enslavement to
Fate and matter. This counterfeit daimon has an analogue in the ‘opposing
spirit’ of the Apocryphon of John, which is infused by the archons into the
material composition of Adam to resist the aims of the good spirit, who has
been sent by the Father to awaken Adam’s spiritual nature33.

This gnostic exposition of the fall of the Anthropos is of exceeding impor-
tance for the light it casts on Zosimos’s attitude to the astrological and dai-
monic dimensions of alchemy. No doubt Zosimos would not go so far as to
reject entirely the idea of ‘opportune tinctures’. The idea that alchemical
processes and substances are sympathetically aligned to astral influences had
been central to alchemy from the start, as is reflected in the planetary sym-
bols for gold and silver (i.e. the solar disk and lunar crescent). As a follower
of the “Hermetic” way in alchemy, Zosimos would no doubt have been aware

33 Apocryphon of John, in: Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library, N.H.C. II, 1.21; 24-27; 29-30.
Note also the analogies with the Book of Enoch: the angels of Ialdabaoth seduce the daughters
of men and beget offspring through them (II, 1.29-30).

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140 KYLE A. FRASER

of the strong daimonic and astrologic doctrine attributed to Hermes, for
instance in the Koré Kosmou:

These are the men who, having learned from Hermes that the atmosphere is full
of daimons, inscribed it on stelae . . . they became initiators of men in arts and
sciences and all pursuits, as well as lawgivers. These men, having learned from
Hermes that things below are ordered sympathetically by the Demiurge to those
above, instituted the sacred procedures (hieropoiias) on earth which are verti-
cally aligned ( proskathetous) to the heavenly mysteries34.

Clearly the Hermetic view expressed here recognizes the necessity of dai-
monic influences and the vertical alignment of the sciences to the heavens.
Indeed, Zosimos does not deny the importance of these sympathetic “verti-
cal” relations. The problem is that the planets, and their archontic rulers, are
also—and more fundamentally—antipathetic to the spiritual aims of trans-
mutation. Thus, in addition to the observance of astrologic conditions, Zosimos
insists on the need for a rigorous methodology and technique, grounded in
an empirical grasp of the natural powers of substances. His view is not that
the astrologic side should be rejected entirely, but that a diversity of meth-
ods and techniques should be recognized within the single Art (17.160-170).
Just as in the area of medicine we do not put all of our trust in healing priests,
but seek out also the practical advice of natural physicians, so the alchemist,
Zosimos argues, should not put all of his faith in the stars, but should develop
a strong basis in technique, operating independently, as far as this is possi-
ble, from the changing whims of Fate (18.171-189).

The argument of On the Letter Omega implies the existence of different
schools of alchemy, with different methods and aims. The school which
Zosimos criticizes follows an exclusively astrological methodology, with
little regard for the practical operation of furnaces and other apparatus. The
folly of these alchemists lies in their complete subservience to the archons
and their daimonic messengers.

These considerations provide a fuller context and background for the
Synkellos fragment, and its claims about the daimonic origins of Chêmeia.
Though Zosimos does indeed acknowledge the role of daimons in Omega,
he also wants to maintain that the alchemist can operate, to a large extent,
independently of daimonic influences. The alchemist achieves this indepen-
dence by attending to the natural sympathies and antipathies of substances,
and by developing an empirical technique suited to manipulating these na-

34 Following the Greek text of Nock & Festugière, Corpus Hermeticum, vol. IV, fragment
XXIII, 67-68.

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ALCHEMY AS FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE 141

tural powers. The true alchemist must recognize the necessity of daimonic
and astral influences, without becoming further enslaved to them. For the
goal of true alchemy—spiritual alchemy—is liberation from the conditions
of fatality.

That this is indeed the considered opinion of Zosimos is confirmed by
another of his theoretical works, the Final Quittance. Here we find once
again a discussion of the differences between ‘opportune tinctures’, which
are astrologic and daimonic in origin, and ‘natural tinctures’, which are
grounded in a more empirical methodology and technique. In this account,
the daimonology is developed much more directly and extensively. The dai-
mons are conceived not merely as cosmic and impersonal principles of Fate,
but as personalities with their own malevolent intentions. There are, we shall
see, striking connections to the Book of Enoch, with its concerns about preda-
tory daimons.

Zosimos claims that those tinctures which are called ‘opportune’ (kairikai)
in his day were, in the time of Hermes, regarded as natural tinctures ( physikai
baphai). But this true alchemy, which Hermes knew, has been almost for-
gotten, due to the jealous stratagems of the daimons, who resent the inde-
pendence of the alchemists and their natural methods. Eventually these natural
secrets were appropriated by the daimons and became contingent upon their
influence and will. The daimons now jealously guard these secrets of tinc-
turing, revealing them only to the priests who slavishly worship them:

When the [daimonic] guardians are driven off from the great men they [sc. the
daimons] deliberate as to how they may lay claim to our natural tinctures, so
as not to be driven away by men, but venerated and invoked, and nourished
with sacrifices. This is what they did. They concealed all the natural and self-
regulating tinctures (ta physika kai automata), not only out of envy, but giving
heed also to their own sustenance, so that they would not be whipped, chased
away, and punished with hunger through the cessation of the sacrifices. They
acted as follows. They hid the natural tincture and introduced their non-natural
tincture, and gave these to their priests; and if the common people were neglect-
ful of the sacrifices, they hindered them even in attaining the non-natural tinc-
tures (Fest. p. 366, ll. 18-26)35.

Zosimos holds the view that the daimons which inhabit the upper regions of
the world are nourished by the smoke of sacrifice, and so are dependent upon
the offerings of human worshippers. There is an implication that the airy bo-
dies of these daimons are actually replenished by the sacrificial vapours, a

35 I am following the Greek text established by Festugière, Révélation I, appendix 1,
363-368.

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142 KYLE A. FRASER

question that seems to have been debated in theurgic circles36. In order to
ensure the maintenance of their sacrifices, Zosimos says, the daimons plot-
ted to keep the alchemists dependent upon them. They concealed the old
Hermetic secrets of natural tincturing and replaced them with non-natural or
‘opportune’ tinctures, which they now reveal only to those who make the
proper sacrifices.

Zosimos says that these alchemists, who serve the daimons in exchange
for secrets of tincturing, are fixated on the material ends of the art. They are
‘wretched lovers of pleasure’ (p. 67, l. 5), who cannot see, or do not care to
see, the spiritual dangers of their enslavement. Instead of seeking liberation
through alchemy from the pleasures and pains of the body, they surrender
themselves, body and soul, to these predatory daimons, in exchange for the
superficial trappings of the art. In other words they care only for profane
gold but not for the “gold” of self-purification. It is clear that these mis-
guided alchemists are in precisely the same situation as those blind follow-
ers of Fate, criticized by Zosimos in On the Letter Omega: those who ridicule
the techniques of natural alchemy and trust only in astrologic and daimonic
principles.

Zosimos seems to be concerned that Theosebeia is associating with a
“prophet” of this debased school of alchemy, and has unwittingly made her-
self the object of daimonic lust: ‘They wish to do the same to you, dear lady,
through their false prophet: the local daimons flatter you, hungry not only
for sacrifices, but for your soul’ (p. 367, ll. 6-8). Here we are close indeed
to the concerns expressed in the Book of Enoch about predatory daimons,
which attempt to seduce human women with false promises of wisdom.
Zosimos urges Theosebeia to master the immoderate bodily passions and
appetites, which attract these daimons, and to focus inwardly on attaining
the knowledge and experience of the true God. The final lines clarify in a
direct and explicit way the Hermetic and Gnostic influences that underlie his
interpretation of alchemy:

Do these things until you perfect your soul. When you recognize that you have
been perfected, then, realizing the natural tinctures, spit on matter, take refuge
in Poimandres, and once baptized in the krater (baptistheisa tôi kratêri) ascend
quickly to your own race (Fest. p. 368, ll. 1-4).

36 Iamblichus falls on the other side of the debate. On his view, the idea that daimons are
nourished by theurgic sacrifice involves a confusion of “wholes” and “parts”, making the daimons
subject to, and dependent upon, the material substances over which they are supposed to hold
dominion. See Les Mystères d’Égypte, 210.15ff (des Places).

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ALCHEMY AS FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE 143

Zosimos seems to imply a familiarity with two of the tractates of the Corpus
Hermeticum (or if we cannot assume that he knows the tractates themselves,
at least he knows their central concepts). The Poimandres, discussed earlier
in the paper, presents the famous gnostic account of the “narcissistic” fall of
the Anthropos. Zosimos exhorts Theosebeia to spit on matter and take refuge
in Poimandres. In other words he urges her to reject the downward pull of
the body and its appetites, which led to the original fall, and which continue
to keep humans enslaved to Fate and the daimons; he urges her to resist this
attraction to Nature and to return to her spiritual origin as a true child of
Poimandres, superior to the daimons and their archontic masters.

The reference to the krater, or baptismal bowl, is also highly significant.
Tractate IV of our Corpus Hermeticum, The Krater or Monad 37, describes a
spiritual baptism of the soul in nous or mind. This baptism imparts the secret
gnôsis which liberates us from material enslavement: ‘All those who heeded
the proclamation and were baptized in mind (ebaptisanto tou noos), these
received the gnôsis and became complete men, having received mind’ (C.H.
IV, 4). The Greek word for ‘baptize’, baptizein and its cognates, is connected,
etymologically and conceptually, to the alchemic terms baphê and katabaphê
which I translate as ‘tincture’. The different kinds of katabaphai which
Zosimos discusses in On the Letter Omega and The Final Quittance are dif-
ferent ways of tincturing or “baptizing” metals. This “baptism” of metals is,
for Zosimos, a purification; and it is the external sign of a deeper spiritual
baptism, a baptism precisely of the sort that is described in C.H. IV. In refer-
ring Theosebeia to this Hermetic tractate, and to its central concept of “bap-
tism”, Zosimos is reminding her of the true meaning of alchemy—the Hermetic
meaning—and warning her against falling in with those debased practitio-
ners of the Art who care only for material results to the detriment of their
very souls, and to the delight of the predatory daimons.

In the end, however, the problem of daimons remains largely unresolved.
Given that the alchemist must take some account of these daimonic and astro-
logic influences—inasmuch as he works through the material world—how
can he do so without compromising the spiritual integrity of the Art and risk-
ing daimonic seduction? Is there any way to reconcile the spiritual aims of
the Art with its material necessities? There is one tantalizing suggestion.
Zosimos advises Theosebeia to perform certain sacrifices after the example
of Solomon: ‘Then, without being called to do it, offer sacrifices to the dai-
mons, not the useful variety, not those which nourish and comfort them, but

37 For the Greek text see Nock & Festugière, Corpus Hermeticum, vol. I.

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144 KYLE A. FRASER

those which deter and destroy them, those which Mambres [Jambres?] gave
to Solomon, king of Jerusalem, and of which he himself has written accord-
ing to his wisdom’ (Final Quittance, Fest. p. 367, ll. 24-27). Zosimos here
shows his familiarity with the folk legends of Solomon as a magus and exor-
cist, who holds divine dominion over daimons. One wonders whether he has
read the Testament of Solomon38, in which Solomon describes how he har-
nessed the powers of the daimons, with the aid of their angelic superiors, in
order to complete the construction of the Temple. Solomon, through the divine
power of his ring, commands each demon, in turn, to reveal its name, its dis-
tinctive activity, its planetary or zodiacal designation, and the angelic or
divine power that thwarts it. So long as he maintains a pious relation to God,
he is able to control the demons, through their divine superiors, and harness
their powers for sacred ends. But when his piety is compromised, and he
sacrifices to pagan gods, his control over the demons is lost, and he becomes
enslaved to them: ‘. . . my spirit was darkened and I became a laughingstock
to the idols and demons.’ (Testament 26.7-8). As K. von Stuckrad argues,
one sees in the Testament a monotheistic response to the problem of the
malevolent astral powers39. Of special interest is the manner in which the
Egyptian decan gods are demoted to daimons, now held under the dominion
of the Jewish angels and, ultimately, the Jewish God (Testament, 18). If
Zosimos does have this Solomonic tradition in mind, then he may be sug-
gesting to Theosebeia that the daimons which are attempting to control and
seduce her can, in turn, be controlled and made subject to the spiritual work
of the alchemist—just as Solomon was able to harness the daimons toward
the spiritual ends of the Temple. Unfortunately, Zosimos does not clarify the

38 See Testament of Solomon, trans. D.C. Duling. In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed.
Charlesworth, 935-987. There is disagreement as to the date of the Testament, but the consen-
sus seems to place it between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, in which case Zosimos could be
familiar with it. If the “Mambres” of Zosimos is the Egyptian sorcerer Jambres, mentioned in
the Testament (25.4), then the connection is strengthened (see Duling, 950-51, nt. 94). In any
case, Zosimos seems to be familiar with the tradition, even if we cannot be certain that he knows
this version of it. A similar legend can be found in the Nag Hammadi Testimony of Truth. There
we are told that Solomon built Jerusalem by means of daimons, which he subsequently impris-
oned in the Temple (in Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library, N.H.C. IX, 3.70).

39 K. von Stuckrad notes that the subordination of the astral powers to the Jewish God and
His angelic ministers neutralizes their malevolent potency, so that Solomon can harness their
powers in the sacred work of the Temple’s construction: ‘Die Gestirnsmächte sind depotenzierte
Engel oder Götter . . . Der jüdische Gott ist es, welcher die Himmelsmächte kontrolliert; durch
seine Kraft werden die Dämonen ihrer Göttlichkeit beraubt, gezüchtigt und sogar zum Dienst
am Tempelbau herangezogen’ (Das Ringen um die Astrologie, 417).

aries_f2-125-147 10/17/2004 11:19 Page 144

ALCHEMY AS FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE 145

character of these sacrifices, or their function within the alchemical art, so
this speculation cannot be confirmed with any certainty.

4. Conclusion

We are now in a better position to understand why Zosimos, in the quota-
tion from Synkellos, endorses the Enochian account of the origins of the
occult sciences. The notion that alchemy proceeds on the basis of the reve-
lations of unscrupulous daimons, or that it derives its very efficacy from astro-
logic and daimonic principles, is a central and persistent concern of Zosimos’s
theoretical writings on alchemy. However, in endorsing and indeed deve-
loping the Enochian account of daimonic influence, Zosimos does not view
himself as undermining the divine status of alchemy. True alchemy, Hermetic
alchemy, is above reproach, because it operates—as far as possible—inde-
pendently of daimons and astrologic principles, employing a natural method-
ology based on the natural sympathies and antipathies of substances. When
Zosimos speaks approvingly of the Enochian account, it may be that he has
chiefly in mind that other school of “so-called” alchemists, who are too lazy
for laboratory work and have no interest in the purification of their bodies
and souls. For them the tincturing of metals is surface deep, lacking entirely
the spiritual implications of “baptism” that Zosimos finds philosophically
expressed in his Hermetic sources. Their version of Chêmeia is indeed ‘of
no advantage to the soul’. Zosimos joins the Book of Enoch in condemning
these base practitioners of the occult sciences, who are slaves to their own
passions and to the daimons who rule the world of Fate and matter. He sees
clearly that knowledge in the wrong hands, and applied to the wrong ends,
can enslave; even as it can serve as a tool of liberation and enlightenment
in the right hands.

Kyle Alexander Fraser (1971) is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of
King’s College (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada).

Bibliography

Babbit, Frank Cole (ed. and trans.), Plutarch’s Moralia (Loeb Classical Library), Harvard Uni-
versity Press 1969.

Berthelot, Marcellin, Collection des Anciens Alchimistes Grecs, 3 vols., Paris: G. Steinheil, 1888;
repr. Otto Zeller 1967.

Chadwick, Henry (ed. and trans.), Origen, Contra Celsum, Cambridge 1965.

aries_f2-125-147 10/17/2004 11:19 Page 145

146 KYLE A. FRASER

Charles, R.H. (ed. and trans.), Book of Enoch, In: Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old
Testament, Oxford 1913; repr. 1977.

Charlesworth, James H. (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, I, London: Darton, Longman
& Todd 1983.

Festugière, André-Jean, La Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste Tome I: L’Astrologie et les Sciences
Occultes, Paris 1950.

Fisher, C.D. (ed.), Tacitus, Annalium, Oxford 1906.
Fowden, Garth, The Egyptian Hermes, Cambridge 1986.
Graf, Fritz, ‘Theories of Magic in Antiquity’, in: Mirecki & Meyer (eds.), Magic and Ritual in

the Ancient World, Leiden: Brill 2002, 93-104.
Griffiths, Gwyn J. (ed. and trans.), Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride (On Isis and Osiris), University

of Wales Press 1970.
Jackson, Howard M. (ed. and trans.), Zosimos of Panopolis on the Letter Omega, Scholars Press

1978.
Kippenberg, Hans G. ‘Magic in Roman Civil Discourse: Why Rituals could be Illegal’, in:

Envisioning Magic, Leiden: Brill 1997, 137-163.
Lindsay, Jack. The Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt, London: Frederick Muller 1970.
Mertens, Michèle (ed. and trans.), Les Alchimistes Grecs, Tome 4: Zosime de Panopolis, Mémoires

Authentiques, Paris: Les Belles Lettres 1995.
Mosshammer, Alden A. (ed.), Georgii Syncelli Ecloga Chronographica, Leipzig: BSB B.G.

Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft 1984.
Nock, Arthur Darby & André-Jean Festugière, Hermès Trismégiste, Corpus Hermeticum,

4 vols., Paris: Les Belles Lettres 1945-1954.
Patai, Raphael, The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Sourcebook, Princeton University Press

1994.
Places, Édouard des (ed. and trans.), Jamblique, Les Mystères d’Égypte, Paris: Les Belles Lettres

1996.
Robinson, James M. et al. (eds.), The Nag Hammadi Library, Leiden: E.J. Brill 1977.
Shaw, Gregory, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus, Pennsylvania State

University Press 1995.
Stuckrad, Kocku von, Das Ringen um die Astrologie, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2000.
Thelwall, S. (trans.), Tertullian, On Idolatry, In: James Donaldson & Alexander Roberts (eds.)

The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1926, 61-77.
Thelwall, S. (trans.), Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women, In: James Donaldson & Alexander

Roberts (eds.), The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4., New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1926,
14-25.

Wiesen, David S. (ed. and trans.), Saint Augustine: The City of God against the Pagans,
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【0†Zosimos_Aigyptiakos_Identifying_the_Imag.pdf†file_00000000165861f78120ef1e50ce5321】

Content source: Source.file
Title: Zosimos_Aigyptiakos_Identifying_the_Imag.pdf
Content Snippet:
1. Zosimos Aigyptiakos
2.
3. Arys, 20, 2022 [77-134] issn 1575-166x
4.
5.
6.
7. 114
8.
9. Panopolis.145 He concludes that there is evidence for the practice of traditional cults
10. in the region dating to the early 4th cent. CE, but the cult of Osiris seems to have dis-
11. appeared towards the end of the 3rd cent. CE.146 �is is exactly the time during which
12. Zosimos would have been active.
13.
14. Considering the evidence provided in Zosimos’ works, as well as the information
15. presented in the previous paragraphs on temple personnel and the situation of native
16. cults in the region of Akhmim, is it possible to propose a hypothesis for Zosimos’
17. identity? Different scholars have approached this question with contradictory con-
18. clusions. As I discussed in section 2, Shannon Grimes, in a monograph in which she
19. analyzes the identity and historical context of Zosimos,147 concludes that he was both
20. a “scribal priest” and a supervisor of metalworkers in an Egyptian temple. As I have
21. shown, this interpretation derives from a rather shallow knowledge of the Egyptian
22. priesthood and the Egyptian textual sources of the period. In a recent article, Mat-
23. teo Martelli has examined different passages from Zosimos’ works, showing how he
24. displays a critical attitude towards the priests, whom Martelli assumes to be Egyptian
25. priests from Panopolis, and in particular against the priest Neilos.148 Zosimos pres-
26. ents these priests as having let daimones dominate their art, instead of relying on real
27. expertise, and distinguishes himself from them. He makes the point that reliance on
28. daimones had replaced for these priests the consultation of books, and criticizes them
29. for not paying attention to the texts of the ancients.149 �is is an interesting statement,
30. since Egyptian priestly expertise was focused very prominently on books.150 Chris-
31. tian Bull has engaged with the religious and philosophical context of the Panopoli-
32. tan region, and in particular with Zosimos’ sources and influences, in various recent
33. articles.151 Bull, disagreeing with Grimes’ conclusion, considers that it is unlikely
34. that Zosimos would have belonged to the Egyptian priesthood, but had close con-
35. tact with its members. He proposes different possibilities for Zosimos’ identity:152 a
36.
37. 145. Cf. especially Smith, 2002 and 2017, pp. 423-447. Cf. also Bull 2018a, pp. 216-218 and references
38. there.
39.
40. 146. Smith, 2017, p. 430.
41. 147. Grimes, 2018.
42. 148. Cf. Martelli, 2017. I thank Matteo Martelli for sharing a copy of this article with me.
43. 149. Martelli, 2017, p. 213.
44. 150. Cf. Escolano-Poveda, 2020a, pp. 248-250.
45. 151. Of special interest for my discussion is Bull, 2018a, esp. pp. 218-225. Cf. also Bull, 2018b, where
46.
47. he discusses the works of Zosimos in order to reconstruct the contents of the Physika of Hermes; and
48. Bull, 2020, esp. pp. 142-143, in which he considers the potential connections of Zosimos and his disci-
49. ples, or people from the same milieu, with those who produced the Nag Hammadi codices.
50.
51. 152. Bull, 2018a, pp. 223-225.
52.
53. Marina Escolano-Poveda

【1†Zosimos_Aigyptiakos_Identifying_the_Imag.pdf†file_00000000165861f78120ef1e50ce5321】

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1. Another important question concerns the actual existence of an organized cult
2. in the temples of the region of Akhmim at the time Zosimos lived in the region. Mark
3. Smith has explored the persistence of the practice of ancient Egyptian religion in
4.
5. 143. While the “work” (k#.t) or “secret work” (k#.t St#(.t)) is the designation given to the process of
6. creation of the figurines of Osiris-Khentiamentiu and Sokar in the mysteries, as seen above, in this text
7. it seems to refer to the consecration of the statues by initiated priests, a�er they have been manufactured
8. by the non-initiated artisans listed in the first section.
9.
10. 144. Lieven, 2007, pp. 150-151. On the stela Leiden V.1, lines 8-10, belonging to the chief sculptor
11. Hatiay, we find the following text, which may indicate a certain degree of initiation for some specific
12. workers of the Chamber of Gold: “…il me promut à la direction des travaux alors que j’étais (encore)
13. simple particulier, parce qu’ il m’avait trouvé à son gré, en sorte que je fus introduit au ‘Château de l’or
14. pour achever les statues et les images de tous les dieux, sans qu’ il en demeurât de cache à mes yeux. Je
15. fus donc un ‘préposé au mystère’ , qui voit Rê dans Ses manifestations et Atoum lors de Son (ré)enfan-
16. tement” (Kruchten, 1989, pp. 192-193). In this text, a particular (nmH.w) becomes a Hr.y sSt# through
17. initiation into the Chamber of Gold (bs.kw| r Hw.t nbw, “I was initiated into the Chamber of Gold”) and
18. is able to see the Sun in all his manifestations.
19.
20. Zosimos Aigyptiakos
21.
22. Arys, 20, 2022 [77-134] issn 1575-166x
23.
24.
25.
26. 114
27.
28. Panopolis.145 He concludes that there is evidence for the practice of traditional cults
29. in the region dating to the early 4th cent. CE, but the cult of Osiris seems to have dis-
30. appeared towards the end of the 3rd cent. CE.146 �is is exactly the time during which
31. Zosimos would have been active.
32.
33. Considering the evidence provided in Zosimos’ works, as well as the information
34. presented in the previous paragraphs on temple personnel and the situation of native
35. cults in the region of Akhmim, is it possible to propose a hypothesis for Zosimos’
36. identity? Different scholars have approached this question with contradictory con-
37. clusions. As I discussed in section 2, Shannon Grimes, in a monograph in which she
38. analyzes the identity and historical context of Zosimos,147 concludes that he was both
39. a “scribal priest” and a supervisor of metalworkers in an Egyptian temple. As I have
40. shown, this interpretation derives from a rather shallow knowledge of the Egyptian
41. priesthood and the Egyptian textual sources of the period. In a recent article, Mat-
42. teo Martelli has examined different passages from Zosimos’ works, showing how he
43. displays a critical attitude towards the priests, whom Martelli assumes to be Egyptian
44. priests from Panopolis, and in particular against the priest Neilos.148 Zosimos pres-
45. ents these priests as having let daimones dominate their art, instead of relying on real
46. expertise, and distinguishes himself from them.

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1. 3. On the transmission of alchemical treatises in Byzantine manuscripts, cf. Martelli, 2019, pp. 11-43,
2. with references.
3.
4. Zosimos Aigyptiakos
5.
6. Arys, 20, 2022 [77-134] issn 1575-166x
7.
8.
9.
10. 80
11.
12. on,4 these texts have not received much attention from Egyptologists.5 �ey have
13. been studied mainly from a Classics point of view, and thus framed in a Hellenic
14. rather than Egyptian context. In this paper, I examine one of the main works by the
15. first alchemist for whom we have some reliable biographical information: Zosimos of
16. Panopolis.6 While we have few details about his life, a close analysis of his works may
17. reveal interesting aspects of his historical and cultural context. One of the difficulties
18. of this task lies in the fact that Zosimos employed an allegorical language to describe
19. his procedures, and delighted in the use of Decknamen, secret names, which later
20. would become common in alchemical literature. However, as Lawrence Principe has
21. noted, “Zosimos surely drew upon his own experience and knowledge of contempo-
22. raneous religious rites for imagery to use in this allegorical sequence. His language of
23. altars, dismemberment, and sacrifice surely reflects something of late Greco-Egyp-
24. tian temple practices”.7
25.
26. 2. On Zosimos and the “Visions”
27.
28. According to most sources, Zosimos was born in the city of Panopolis, present
29. Akhmim, in Middle Egypt,8 and seems to have later lived in Alexandria. He also
30.
31. 4. Festugière already located the early recipes in the context of the Egyptian temples, cf. Festugière,
32. 2014, p. 220.
33.
34. 5. Some attempts have been made at identifying and interpreting the Egyptian elements in alchemical
35. texts, cf. especially Daumas, 1983, and Derchain, 1990, and some sections of Fowden, 1986. Lindsay,
36. 1970 takes a more Classics-focused approach (I discuss this work in more detail in section 2). Quack,
37. 2006a, pp. 280-281 analyzes some of the Egyptian elements and context in Pseudo-Demokritos’ Physika
38. kai mystika (on which cf. excursus in section 5 in the present paper). For an analysis of Grimes, 2018,
39. and Roberts, 2019, cf. section 2, below.
40.
41. 6. For introductions about Zosimos of Panopolis, cf. Fowden, 1986, pp. 120-126; Mertens, 2002; Prin-
42. cipe, 2013, pp. 15-24; Dufault, 2019, pp. 93-117; Martelli, 2019, pp. 73-86. For the latest edition and
43. translation of his Authentic Memoirs, cf. Mertens, 1995. Martelli is currently preparing a complete edi-
44. tion of the Syriac Zosimos. For the Arabic Zosimos, cf. Hallum, 2008a.
45.
46. 7. Principe, 2013, p. 19.
47. 8. On the available information about Zosimos’ life, cf. Mertens, 1995, pp. xii-xix. Akhmim is located

【3†Divine_Images_Zosimos_of_Panopoliss_Spir.pdf†file_00000000868c61f5818ad6c2ba1795c0】

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1. 1 On dates for Zosimos, see Michèle Mertens, Zosime de Panopolis: Mémoires authentiques, 2nd ed.
2. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002), xv–xvi. I will hereafter use Auth.Mem. as an abbreviation for this
3. text, which is a translation of some of Zosimos’s Greek works.
4. 2 André-Jean Festugière, La Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gabalda, 1950),
5. 260-62.
6. 3 On Zosimos as scribal priest see Shannon Grimes, Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and
7. the Alchemical Arts in Roman Egypt (Aukland: Rubedo Press, 2018), 69-76; on alchemy’s roots
8. in Egyptian religious traditions of statue-making, see, for example, Phillipe Derchain, “L’atelier
9. des orfevres a Dendara et les origins de l’alchimie,” Chronique d’Egypte LXV (1990); and Aaron
10. Cheak, “The Perfect Black: Egypt and Alchemy,” in Alchemical Traditions: From Antiquity to the
11. Avant-Garde (Melbourne: Numen Books, 2013), 83-91.
12. 4 Detailed discussions of the economic relationships between temple and trade guild metallurgists
13. in Roman Egypt can be found in Grimes, Becoming Gold, ch. 2; and Shannon Grimes, “Secrets of
14. the God-Makers: Re-thinking the Origins of Greco-Egyptian Alchemy,” Syllecta Classica 29 (2018).
15.
16.
17.
18. La Rosa di Paracelso
19.
20. 70
21.
22. both groups. He frequently complains that the ancient traditions he reveres are
23. getting corrupted by wrong-headed, greedy teachers, and he insists–even to met-
24. allurgists who aren’t in the priesthood–that spiritual purification and self-knowl-
25. edge is necessary for the proper execution of metallurgical procedures.5 This
26. paper is neither a comprehensive account of Zosimos’s priestly Sitz im Leben or
27. his religious teachings (which often blend Hermetic and Gnostic thought6), but
28. rather an attempt to explain why Zosimos insists that alchemy is both a spiritual
29. and technical undertaking, and why he thinks it should be practiced in this man-
30. ner even by metallurgists outside of the temples.
31.
32. Using divine images as a theme, I begin by looking at the roots of alchemy
33. among temple artisans and Zosimos’s thoughts on the statues they are crafting.
34. Statues, of course, are one type of divine image, but even more important for
35. Zosimos is the inner work of realizing the divine image within the self. The last
36. section focuses more in-depth on this inner work by examining Zosimos’s theol-
37. ogy in On Apparatus and Furnaces (Letter Omega). This text contains his most
38. detailed discussion of divine images and illustrates how he conveys these spiritu-
39. al teachings to metallurgists who are unaffiliated with the temple. As I will show,
40. Zosimos’s priestly training is influential, and contributes to his belief that efforts
41. to “know thyself,” which lead to divine understanding, is the very same path that
42. leads to knowledge of the cosmos and the natural world.
43.
44. Alchemy and statue-makingAlchemy and statue-making

【4†Divine_Images_Zosimos_of_Panopoliss_Spir.pdf†file_00000000582061f7b5716f4339955194】

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Content Snippet:
1. 1 On dates for Zosimos, see Michèle Mertens, Zosime de Panopolis: Mémoires authentiques, 2nd ed.
2. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002), xv–xvi. I will hereafter use Auth.Mem. as an abbreviation for this
3. text, which is a translation of some of Zosimos’s Greek works.
4. 2 André-Jean Festugière, La Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gabalda, 1950),
5. 260-62.
6. 3 On Zosimos as scribal priest see Shannon Grimes, Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and
7. the Alchemical Arts in Roman Egypt (Aukland: Rubedo Press, 2018), 69-76; on alchemy’s roots
8. in Egyptian religious traditions of statue-making, see, for example, Phillipe Derchain, “L’atelier
9. des orfevres a Dendara et les origins de l’alchimie,” Chronique d’Egypte LXV (1990); and Aaron
10. Cheak, “The Perfect Black: Egypt and Alchemy,” in Alchemical Traditions: From Antiquity to the
11. Avant-Garde (Melbourne: Numen Books, 2013), 83-91.
12. 4 Detailed discussions of the economic relationships between temple and trade guild metallurgists
13. in Roman Egypt can be found in Grimes, Becoming Gold, ch. 2; and Shannon Grimes, “Secrets of
14. the God-Makers: Re-thinking the Origins of Greco-Egyptian Alchemy,” Syllecta Classica 29 (2018).
15.
16.
17.
18. La Rosa di Paracelso
19.
20. 70
21.
22. both groups. He frequently complains that the ancient traditions he reveres are
23. getting corrupted by wrong-headed, greedy teachers, and he insists–even to met-
24. allurgists who aren’t in the priesthood–that spiritual purification and self-knowl-
25. edge is necessary for the proper execution of metallurgical procedures.5 This
26. paper is neither a comprehensive account of Zosimos’s priestly Sitz im Leben or
27. his religious teachings (which often blend Hermetic and Gnostic thought6), but
28. rather an attempt to explain why Zosimos insists that alchemy is both a spiritual
29. and technical undertaking, and why he thinks it should be practiced in this man-
30. ner even by metallurgists outside of the temples.
31.
32. Using divine images as a theme, I begin by looking at the roots of alchemy
33. among temple artisans and Zosimos’s thoughts on the statues they are crafting.
34. Statues, of course, are one type of divine image, but even more important for
35. Zosimos is the inner work of realizing the divine image within the self. The last
36. section focuses more in-depth on this inner work by examining Zosimos’s theol-
37. ogy in On Apparatus and Furnaces (Letter Omega). This text contains his most
38. detailed discussion of divine images and illustrates how he conveys these spiritu-
39. al teachings to metallurgists who are unaffiliated with the temple. As I will show,
40. Zosimos’s priestly training is influential, and contributes to his belief that efforts
41. to “know thyself,” which lead to divine understanding, is the very same path that
42. leads to knowledge of the cosmos and the natural world.
43.
44. Alchemy and statue-makingAlchemy and statue-making

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1. Zosimos promotes gnosis, a profound inner
2. experience of divine reality, as a spiritual approach to alchemy because it offers
3. penetrating insight into the human condition and the natural order, and encour-
4. ages perfection of mind and spirit, as well as excellence in one’s art.
5.
6. Works citedWorks cited
7.
8. Assmann, Jan. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca,
9. N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005.
10.
11. Berthelot, Marcellin and Ch.-Ém. Ruelle. Collection des Anciens Alchimistes Grecs [Col-
12. lection of ancient Greek alchemists], 3 vols. 1888. Reprint, Osnabrück: Otto Zeller,
13. 1967.
14.
15. Berthelot, M. and R. Duval. La Chimie au Moyen Age [Chemistry in the middle ages], 3
16. vols. 1893. Reprint, Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1967.
17.
18. Brakke, David. The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity. Cam-
19. bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010.
20.
21. Bull, Christian. The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a
22. Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
23.
24.
25.
26. La Rosa di Paracelso
27.
28. 80
29.
30. Cheak, Aaron. The Perfect Black: Egypt and Alchemy,” in Alchemical Traditions: From
31. Antiquity to the Avant-Garde, ed. A. Cheak. Melbourne: Numen Books, 2013.
32.
33. Copenhaver, Brian P., editor and translator. Hermetica. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
34. sity Press, 1992.
35.
36. DeConick, April D. “Gnostic Spirituality at the Crossroads of Christianity: Transgressing
37. Boundaries and Creating Orthodoxy,” in Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies Building
38. on the Work of Elaine Pagels, edited by E. Iricinschi, L. Jenott, N. Denzey Lewis, and
39. P. Townsend. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.
40.
41. Derchain, Philippe. “L’Atelier des Orfevres à Dendara et les origins de l’Alchimie,”
42. Chronique d’Egypte LXV (1990): 219-242.
43.
44. Dufault, Olivier. Early Greek Alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity.
45. Berkeley: California Classical Studies, 2019.
46.
47. Festugière, A.-J. La Révélation D’Hermès Trismégiste [The revelation of Hermes Tris-
48. megistus], 4 Vols. 2nd ed. Paris: Gabalda, 1950.
49.
50. Fraser, Kyle. “Zosimos of Panopolis and the Book of Enoch: Alchemy as Forbidden
51. Knowledge.” Aries 4, no. 2 (July 2004): 125-147.
52.
53. Grimes, Shannon. Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and the Alchemical Arts in Ro-
54. man Egypt. Panopolis Series vol. 1. Aukland: Rubedo Press, 2018.
55.
56. –. “Secrets of the God Makers: Re-thinking the Origins of Greco-Egyptian Alchemy,”
57. Syllecta Classica 29 (2018): 67-89.
58.
59. –. “Zosimus of Panopolis: Alchemy, Nature, and Religion in Late Antiquity.” PhD diss.,
60. Syracuse University, 2006.

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1. Zosimos promotes gnosis, a profound inner
2. experience of divine reality, as a spiritual approach to alchemy because it offers
3. penetrating insight into the human condition and the natural order, and encour-
4. ages perfection of mind and spirit, as well as excellence in one’s art.
5.
6. Works citedWorks cited
7.
8. Assmann, Jan. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca,
9. N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005.
10.
11. Berthelot, Marcellin and Ch.-Ém. Ruelle. Collection des Anciens Alchimistes Grecs [Col-
12. lection of ancient Greek alchemists], 3 vols. 1888. Reprint, Osnabrück: Otto Zeller,
13. 1967.
14.
15. Berthelot, M. and R. Duval. La Chimie au Moyen Age [Chemistry in the middle ages], 3
16. vols. 1893. Reprint, Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1967.
17.
18. Brakke, David. The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity. Cam-
19. bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010.
20.
21. Bull, Christian. The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a
22. Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
23.
24.
25.
26. La Rosa di Paracelso
27.
28. 80
29.
30. Cheak, Aaron. The Perfect Black: Egypt and Alchemy,” in Alchemical Traditions: From
31. Antiquity to the Avant-Garde, ed. A. Cheak. Melbourne: Numen Books, 2013.
32.
33. Copenhaver, Brian P., editor and translator. Hermetica. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
34. sity Press, 1992.
35.
36. DeConick, April D. “Gnostic Spirituality at the Crossroads of Christianity: Transgressing
37. Boundaries and Creating Orthodoxy,” in Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies Building
38. on the Work of Elaine Pagels, edited by E. Iricinschi, L. Jenott, N. Denzey Lewis, and
39. P. Townsend. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.
40.
41. Derchain, Philippe. “L’Atelier des Orfevres à Dendara et les origins de l’Alchimie,”
42. Chronique d’Egypte LXV (1990): 219-242.
43.
44. Dufault, Olivier. Early Greek Alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity.
45. Berkeley: California Classical Studies, 2019.
46.
47. Festugière, A.-J. La Révélation D’Hermès Trismégiste [The revelation of Hermes Tris-
48. megistus], 4 Vols. 2nd ed. Paris: Gabalda, 1950.
49.
50. Fraser, Kyle. “Zosimos of Panopolis and the Book of Enoch: Alchemy as Forbidden
51. Knowledge.” Aries 4, no. 2 (July 2004): 125-147.
52.
53. Grimes, Shannon. Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and the Alchemical Arts in Ro-
54. man Egypt. Panopolis Series vol. 1. Aukland: Rubedo Press, 2018.
55.
56. –. “Secrets of the God Makers: Re-thinking the Origins of Greco-Egyptian Alchemy,”
57. Syllecta Classica 29 (2018): 67-89.
58.
59. –. “Zosimus of Panopolis: Alchemy, Nature, and Religion in Late Antiquity.” PhD diss.,
60. Syracuse University, 2006.

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1. 4. Festugière already located the early recipes in the context of the Egyptian temples, cf. Festugière,
2. 2014, p. 220.
3.
4. 5. Some attempts have been made at identifying and interpreting the Egyptian elements in alchemical
5. texts, cf. especially Daumas, 1983, and Derchain, 1990, and some sections of Fowden, 1986. Lindsay,
6. 1970 takes a more Classics-focused approach (I discuss this work in more detail in section 2). Quack,
7. 2006a, pp. 280-281 analyzes some of the Egyptian elements and context in Pseudo-Demokritos’ Physika
8. kai mystika (on which cf. excursus in section 5 in the present paper). For an analysis of Grimes, 2018,
9. and Roberts, 2019, cf. section 2, below.
10.
11. 6. For introductions about Zosimos of Panopolis, cf. Fowden, 1986, pp. 120-126; Mertens, 2002; Prin-
12. cipe, 2013, pp. 15-24; Dufault, 2019, pp. 93-117; Martelli, 2019, pp. 73-86. For the latest edition and
13. translation of his Authentic Memoirs, cf. Mertens, 1995. Martelli is currently preparing a complete edi-
14. tion of the Syriac Zosimos. For the Arabic Zosimos, cf. Hallum, 2008a.
15.
16. 7. Principe, 2013, p. 19.
17. 8. On the available information about Zosimos’ life, cf. Mertens, 1995, pp. xii-xix. Akhmim is located
18.
19. close to Nag Hammadi, where Gnostic and Hermetic treatises were copied and hidden between 340 and
20. 370 CE. �e orthography of some Greek words has led Mahé to propose a dating of the second half of
21. the 3rd century or the beginning of the 4th cent. CE for their composition, which would make them con-
22. temporary of Zosimos (Mahé, 1978, p. 11). On the context of the Nag Hammadi codices, and potential
23. connections between the circle of Zosimos and those who produced the codices, cf. Bull, 2020, esp. pp.
24. 142-143.
25.
26. Marina Escolano-Poveda
27.
28. Arys, 20, 2022 [77-134] issn 1575-166x
29.
30.
31.
32. 81
33.
34. appears to have taken a trip to Memphis in order to inspect a furnace in a temple.9
35. He lived around the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th cent. CE, and thus was
36. roughly contemporary with authors such as Iamblichos, and probably part of the
37. same philosophical environment.10 He appears to have written twenty-eight books
38. about alchemy, some of which he addressed to �eosebeia, who may have been a dis-
39. ciple of his and perhaps his patron;11 this may also be just a literary device common
40. to the dialogical character of these texts.12 �ey are preserved in Greek Byzantine
41. copies and one Syriac manuscript.13 �ese works, in contrast to the previous recipe
42. collections, “witness a coherent program of research that draws on both material
43. and intellectual sources”.14 Zosimos’ works describe diverse instruments and tech-
44. niques, crediting their origin to their creators, and present the process and results of
45. his experiments incorporating his thoughts and impressions.

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1. �is position would have
2. granted him certain access to some restricted areas of the temple connected to his
3. practice, as well as to some treatises kept in the library. If we consider, as I have pro-
4. posed,160 that the so-called Hermetic ritual communities were originally groups of
5. bilingual high-ranking Egyptian priests, who merged traditional Egyptian theology
6. and technical knowledge with Greek philosophy in their treatises, Zosimos would
7. not have been part of these groups, but would, as noted, have had access to these
8. works, and contributed to their distribution outside the temple milieu at a moment
9. in which the native temples of the region may have been dissolving. Within this inter-
10.
11. 158. On Iamblichos’ use of an Egyptian priestly identity in the De mysteriis, cf. Escolano-Poveda,
12. 2020a, pp. 225-236. For a recent English translation of De mysteriis, cf. Clarke, Dillon, & Hershbell, 2003.
13.
14. 159. For an analysis of this aspect of Heliodoros’ Aithiopika, cf. Escolano-Poveda, 2020b.
15. 160. Cf. n. 156, above.
16.
17. Marina Escolano-Poveda
18.
19. Arys, 20, 2022 [77-134] issn 1575-166x
20.
21.
22.
23. 117
24.
25. pretation, it is perfectly plausible that Zosimos could have been a Christian or con-
26. verted to Christianity at some point in his life.
27.
28. In conclusion, a closer look at Zosimos’ imagery allows us to locate the first
29. alchemist for whom we have biographical information in the midst of a moment
30. of intense intellectual and social transformation at the Panopolis of the end of the
31. 3rd cent. CE. While we do not know to which temple in the area he may have been
32. connected, there is evidence for the survival of the great Temple of Min at Panopo-
33. lis in awe-inspiring condition until its destruction in the fourteenth century.161 �is
34. temple, about which not much is known, contained astronomical representations,162
35. and perhaps also lunar staircases, as Min was a lunar god.163 On the roof of the tem-
36. ple, Osirian chapels may have existed, although the twel�h-century testimony of Ibn
37. Jubayr does not refer to them. During Zosimos’ life, some form of ritual connected
38. to the resurrection of Osiris as described in the mysteries of Osiris in the month of
39. Khoiak may have still been practiced in some form at the temple, and he may have
40. been involved somehow in it as a specialized cra�sman. In his practice, as someone
41. deeply interested and well-read in the origins of his discipline, he may have come into
42. conflict with priests in the area. �is could have been connected to the transmission
43. of his knowledge to people outside the temple sphere, evidenced in his address of
44. part of his work to �eosebeia, who may have been his patron.164 All the statements
45. that refer to Zosimos’ life have to be carefully framed as conjectures, but I hope that
46. this paper will have provided some firmer ground for our knowledge of the identity
47. of this key figure in the development of early alchemy.
48.
49. 161. Sauneron translates Ibn Jubayr’s description of the temple, dating to the 12th cent., in Sauneron,
50. 1951.

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1. A possible explanation of this absence is that the translation of Zosimos' text
2. was deemed sufficiently controversial to delete it from many copies of "Keys
3. of Mercy."
4.
5. Zosimos:
6.
7. Zosimos, the author of Part Two of the present text, was the most famous
8. alchemist of his time. He was a gnostic philosopher, born in the city of Panopolis
9. (present day Akhmim) in Southern Egypt around the year 300 A.D. He lived in
10. Alexandria, and traveled to many parts of the Hellenic world (see Read 1937,
11. and Hopkins 1967). Although Zosimos was a prolific writer, all his books have
12. been lost and what remains of them today are mere passages and quotes written
13. in the original Greek language, or translated to Syriac or Arabic. The Greek and
14. Syriac texts have been translated to French by Berthelot (1 885, 1888, 1893) and
15. discussed in detail by Halleux (1979) and Mertens (1990).
16.
17. Arabic translations of Zosimos' work are listed by Sezgin (1971, p. 73) and
18. by Ullmann (1972, p. 160). They are also listed in the Arabic encyclopedia,
19. "Kitab al-Fihrist", published in Baghdad in 987 A.D., by Ibn A1-Nadim (1872).
20. In Section Ten of this book, Nadim gives the titles of four books authored by
21. Zosimos (see Flugel 1872); they are: "Keys of the Craft," by "Rimos," (its
22. title was translated by Berthelot 1888, p. 28) as "Keys of the Work"); "Keys
23. of Magic," by "Thosimos"; "The Book of Elements," by "Dosimos" and
24. "Book to All the Wise of the Craft" also by Dosimos. The inconsistency in
25. spelling Zosimos' name can be traced to two reasons: (a) Arabic vowels may be
26. deleted, altered, or transposed, according to certain rules, to render foreign names
27. easier to pronounce; (b) the pairs of Arabic letters "Ra" and "Za" that produce
28. the sounds "R" and "2," and "Dal" and "Thal," that produce the sounds
29.
30.
31.
32. 170 KHADEM
33.
34. "D," and "Th" (as in "the") are identical in shape, except for a dot on top of
35. the second letter of each pair. A dot on the letter "Ra" changes it to "Za" and
36. a dot on "Dal," forms the letter "Thal," In the writings of Geber, Avicenna
37. and Tughra'i, Zosimos is referred to as Rismos or Zismos, depending on whether
38. the copier of the manuscript remembered to put the dot. For example on p. 2 of
39. the Introduction of the present text, Zosimos' name is spelled with a dot, whereas
40. on the title page of Part Two it is spelled without the dot. Nadim, probably did
41. not realize that the authors he lists as Rimos, Thosimos and Dosimos were one
42. and the same person.

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1. Bibliography
2.
3. Abt, Theodor, ed. 2007.The Book of Pictures (Muṣḥaf aṣ-ṣuwar) by Zosimos of Panopolis.
4. Supplement to Corpus Alchemicum Arabicum Series, ed. T. Abt and W. Madelung.
5. Zurich: Living Human Heritage Publications.
6.
7. Abt, Theodor, ed. 2011. The Book of Pictures (Muṣḥaf aṣ-ṣuwar) by Zosimos of Panopolis.
8. Translated by Salwa Fuad and Theodor Abt. Corpus Alchemicum Arabicum Series
9. Vol. ii.2, ed. T. Abt andW. Madelung. Zurich: Living Human Heritage Publications.
10.
11. Abt, Theodor, ed. 2016.TheBook of TheKeys of theWork (KitābMafātīḥ aṣ-ṣanʽa) byZosi-
12.
13. 70 For example, the alchemical marriage (or coniunctio) has been theorized extensively
14. in Jungian psychology, which is yet another chapter in the history of erotic alchemical
15. themes. See Jung 1970.
16.
17.
18.
19. zosimos and theosebeia 15
20.
21. Gnosis 7 (2022) 1–16
22.
23. mos of Panopolis. Translated by Salwa Fuad and Theodor Abt. Corpus Alchemicum
24. ArabicumSeriesVol. iii, ed. T. Abt andW.Madelung. Zurich: LivingHumanHeritage
25. Publications.
26.
27. Alston, Richard. 1998. “Trade and the City in Roman Egypt.” Pages 168–202 in Trade,
28. Traders, and the Ancient City. Edited by Helen Parkins and Christopher John Smith.
29. London: Routledge.
30.
31. Berthelot, Marcellin and Ch.-Ém. Ruelle, eds and trans. 1967 [1888]. Collection des
32. Anciens Alchimistes Grecs, 3 vols. Osnabrück: Otto Zeller.
33.
34. Berthelot, Marcellin and R. Duval, eds and trans. 1967 [1893]. La Chimie auMoyen Age,
35. 3 vols. 1893. Osnabrück: Otto Zeller.
36.
37. Burkhalter, Fabienne. 1998. “La production des objets en metal (or, argent, bronze) en
38. Égypte hellénistique et romaine a travers les sources papyrologiques.” Pages 125–133
39. inCommerce et artisanatdans l’Alexandriehellénistique et romaine:Actesducolloque
40. d’Athènes 11–12 décembre 1988. Edited by Jean-Yves Empereur. Athènes: École fran-
41. çaise d’Athènes.
42.
43. Chittick, William C. 2012. In Search of the Lost Heart: Explorations in Islamic Thought.
44. Collected essays edited byM. Rustom and A. Kahlil. Albany: State University of New
45. York Press.
46.
47. Dufault, Olivier. 2019. Early Greek Alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity.
48. Berkeley: California Classical Studies.
49.
50. Grimes, Shannon. 2018. BecomingGold: Zosimos of Panopolis and the Alchemical Arts in
51. Roman Egypt. Panopolis Series vol. 1, ed. A. Cheak. Aukland: Rubedo Press.

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1. I agree that she might be a patron, but I think this patronage makes much more
2. sense if we see her as a metallurgist in a trade guild context.
3. 29 See especially Auth.Mem. I (On Apparatus and Furnaces) and CAAG III.51 (Final Account).
4. 30 See Peter van Minnen, “Urban Craftsmen in Roman Egypt,” in Münstersche Beiträge zur Antiken
5. Handelsgeschichte VI (Ostfildern: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 1987), 51; and Grimes, Becoming
6. Gold, 102-103.
7. 31 The only exception I know of is CAAG III.42 (The True Book of Sophe the Egyptian and of the
8. Divine Lord of the Hebrews and the Powers of Sabaoth), which is in a partial and corrupt state.
9. 32 Auth.Mem.I.2. This book is called On Furnaces and Apparatus, but it is not the same as Zosimos’s
10. similarly titled text.
11. 33 Auth.Mem. I.2-3. I am working with the Greek and with Mertens’ French translation of this text,
12. as well the English translation by Howard Jackson, which is incomplete. Quotations here are from
13. H. Jackson, ed. and trans. Zosimos of Panopolis on the Letter Omega (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars
14. Press, 1978).
15. 34 Auth.Mem. I.2. Jackson’s translation.
16. 35 See Mertens, Zosime de Panopolis, 66-67; and Kyle Fraser, “Zosimos of Panopolis and the Book
17. of Enoch: Alchemy as Forbidden Knowledge,” Aries 4, no. 2 (July 2004), 138-141.
18.
19.
20.
21. Divine Images: Zosimos of Panopolis’s Spiritual Approach to Alchemy
22.
23. 75
24.
25. they know is Fate… Hermes calls such people mindless, merely marchers swept
26. along in Fate’s procession, with no conception of anything incorporeal, and with
27. no understanding of Fate herself, who conducts them justly. Instead they insult
28. the instruction she gives through corporeal experience and imagine nothing be-
29. yond the good fortune she grants.”36
30.
31. Zosimos then proceeds to tell Theosebeia a story about the Anthropos, or
32. primal human, who is a divine mediator between heaven and earth. Myths of
33. the Anthropos are found in several Hermetic and Gnostic texts.37 Typically por-
34. trayed as a divine entity called the “Son of God,” or “Son of Man,” the Anthro-
35. pos is created in God’s image and becomes the archetypal model for the creation
36. of human beings. In some versions of the story, including the one presented by
37. Zosimos, the primal human falls into matter and thus becomes associated with
38. the spiritual principle, or divine image concealed within the material world.38
39. The Anthropos also has a soteriological function in that he bestows spiritual
40. knowledge upon creation, which enables humans to return to the divine source.
41. The various emanations of the Anthropos as he appears in the divine and cosmic
42. realms are sympathetic links that unite the human spirit with the cosmos and
43. with the divine.39

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1. I agree that she might be a patron, but I think this patronage makes much more
2. sense if we see her as a metallurgist in a trade guild context.
3. 29 See especially Auth.Mem. I (On Apparatus and Furnaces) and CAAG III.51 (Final Account).
4. 30 See Peter van Minnen, “Urban Craftsmen in Roman Egypt,” in Münstersche Beiträge zur Antiken
5. Handelsgeschichte VI (Ostfildern: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 1987), 51; and Grimes, Becoming
6. Gold, 102-103.
7. 31 The only exception I know of is CAAG III.42 (The True Book of Sophe the Egyptian and of the
8. Divine Lord of the Hebrews and the Powers of Sabaoth), which is in a partial and corrupt state.
9. 32 Auth.Mem.I.2. This book is called On Furnaces and Apparatus, but it is not the same as Zosimos’s
10. similarly titled text.
11. 33 Auth.Mem. I.2-3. I am working with the Greek and with Mertens’ French translation of this text,
12. as well the English translation by Howard Jackson, which is incomplete. Quotations here are from
13. H. Jackson, ed. and trans. Zosimos of Panopolis on the Letter Omega (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars
14. Press, 1978).
15. 34 Auth.Mem. I.2. Jackson’s translation.
16. 35 See Mertens, Zosime de Panopolis, 66-67; and Kyle Fraser, “Zosimos of Panopolis and the Book
17. of Enoch: Alchemy as Forbidden Knowledge,” Aries 4, no. 2 (July 2004), 138-141.
18.
19.
20.
21. Divine Images: Zosimos of Panopolis’s Spiritual Approach to Alchemy
22.
23. 75
24.
25. they know is Fate… Hermes calls such people mindless, merely marchers swept
26. along in Fate’s procession, with no conception of anything incorporeal, and with
27. no understanding of Fate herself, who conducts them justly. Instead they insult
28. the instruction she gives through corporeal experience and imagine nothing be-
29. yond the good fortune she grants.”36
30.
31. Zosimos then proceeds to tell Theosebeia a story about the Anthropos, or
32. primal human, who is a divine mediator between heaven and earth. Myths of
33. the Anthropos are found in several Hermetic and Gnostic texts.37 Typically por-
34. trayed as a divine entity called the “Son of God,” or “Son of Man,” the Anthro-
35. pos is created in God’s image and becomes the archetypal model for the creation
36. of human beings. In some versions of the story, including the one presented by
37. Zosimos, the primal human falls into matter and thus becomes associated with
38. the spiritual principle, or divine image concealed within the material world.38
39. The Anthropos also has a soteriological function in that he bestows spiritual
40. knowledge upon creation, which enables humans to return to the divine source.
41. The various emanations of the Anthropos as he appears in the divine and cosmic
42. realms are sympathetic links that unite the human spirit with the cosmos and
43. with the divine.39

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1. Derchain, Philippe. “L’Atelier des Orfevres à Dendara et les origins de l’Alchimie,”
2. Chronique d’Egypte LXV (1990): 219-242.
3.
4. Dufault, Olivier. Early Greek Alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity.
5. Berkeley: California Classical Studies, 2019.
6.
7. Festugière, A.-J. La Révélation D’Hermès Trismégiste [The revelation of Hermes Tris-
8. megistus], 4 Vols. 2nd ed. Paris: Gabalda, 1950.
9.
10. Fraser, Kyle. “Zosimos of Panopolis and the Book of Enoch: Alchemy as Forbidden
11. Knowledge.” Aries 4, no. 2 (July 2004): 125-147.
12.
13. Grimes, Shannon. Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and the Alchemical Arts in Ro-
14. man Egypt. Panopolis Series vol. 1. Aukland: Rubedo Press, 2018.
15.
16. –. “Secrets of the God Makers: Re-thinking the Origins of Greco-Egyptian Alchemy,”
17. Syllecta Classica 29 (2018): 67-89.
18.
19. –. “Zosimus of Panopolis: Alchemy, Nature, and Religion in Late Antiquity.” PhD diss.,
20. Syracuse University, 2006.
21.
22. Hornung, Erik. Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many. Translated
23. by J. Baines. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982.
24.
25. Jackson, Howard, editor and translator. Zosimos of Panopolis on the Letter Omega. So-
26. ciety of Biblical Literature Graeco-Roman Religions Series, No. 5. Missoula, Mont.:
27. Scholars Press, 1978.
28.
29. King, Karen. What is Gnosticism? Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univer-
30. sity Press, 2003.
31.
32. LaNiece, Susan, F. Sherman, J. Taylor, and A. Simpson. “Polychromy and Egyptian Bronze:
33. New Evidence for Artificial Coloration.” Studies in Conservation 47, 2 (2002): 95-108.
34.
35. Lorton, David. “The Theology of Cult Statues in Ancient Egypt,” in Born in Heaven,
36. Made on Earth: The Creation of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East, ed. Michael
37. B. Dick. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999.
38.
39. Martelli, Matteo. “Alchemy, Medicine and Religion: Zosimus of Panopolis and the Egyp-
40. tian Priests,” Religion in the Roman Empire 3, 2 (2017): 202-220.
41.
42. Mertens, Michèle, editor and translator. Zosime de Panopolis:Mémoires authentiques. Les
43. alchimistes grecs [Zosimos of Panopolis: authentic memoirs. The Greek alchemists].
44. Vol. IV, Part 1. 2nd ed. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002.
45.
46. Peste, Jonathan. “The Poimandres Group in Corpus Hermeticum: Myth, Mysticism and
47. Gnosis in Late Antiquity.” Ph.D. diss., University of Göteborg, 2002.
48.
49. Ritner, Robert Kreich. The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice. Studies in
50. Ancient Oriental Civilization no. 54. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of
51. Chicago, 1993.

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1. Derchain, Philippe. “L’Atelier des Orfevres à Dendara et les origins de l’Alchimie,”
2. Chronique d’Egypte LXV (1990): 219-242.
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4. Dufault, Olivier. Early Greek Alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity.
5. Berkeley: California Classical Studies, 2019.
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7. Festugière, A.-J. La Révélation D’Hermès Trismégiste [The revelation of Hermes Tris-
8. megistus], 4 Vols. 2nd ed. Paris: Gabalda, 1950.
9.
10. Fraser, Kyle. “Zosimos of Panopolis and the Book of Enoch: Alchemy as Forbidden
11. Knowledge.” Aries 4, no. 2 (July 2004): 125-147.
12.
13. Grimes, Shannon. Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and the Alchemical Arts in Ro-
14. man Egypt. Panopolis Series vol. 1. Aukland: Rubedo Press, 2018.
15.
16. –. “Secrets of the God Makers: Re-thinking the Origins of Greco-Egyptian Alchemy,”
17. Syllecta Classica 29 (2018): 67-89.
18.
19. –. “Zosimus of Panopolis: Alchemy, Nature, and Religion in Late Antiquity.” PhD diss.,
20. Syracuse University, 2006.
21.
22. Hornung, Erik. Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many. Translated
23. by J. Baines. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982.
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25. Jackson, Howard, editor and translator. Zosimos of Panopolis on the Letter Omega. So-
26. ciety of Biblical Literature Graeco-Roman Religions Series, No. 5. Missoula, Mont.:
27. Scholars Press, 1978.
28.
29. King, Karen. What is Gnosticism? Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univer-
30. sity Press, 2003.
31.
32. LaNiece, Susan, F. Sherman, J. Taylor, and A. Simpson. “Polychromy and Egyptian Bronze:
33. New Evidence for Artificial Coloration.” Studies in Conservation 47, 2 (2002): 95-108.
34.
35. Lorton, David. “The Theology of Cult Statues in Ancient Egypt,” in Born in Heaven,
36. Made on Earth: The Creation of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East, ed. Michael
37. B. Dick. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999.
38.
39. Martelli, Matteo. “Alchemy, Medicine and Religion: Zosimus of Panopolis and the Egyp-
40. tian Priests,” Religion in the Roman Empire 3, 2 (2017): 202-220.
41.
42. Mertens, Michèle, editor and translator. Zosime de Panopolis:Mémoires authentiques. Les
43. alchimistes grecs [Zosimos of Panopolis: authentic memoirs. The Greek alchemists].
44. Vol. IV, Part 1. 2nd ed. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002.
45.
46. Peste, Jonathan. “The Poimandres Group in Corpus Hermeticum: Myth, Mysticism and
47. Gnosis in Late Antiquity.” Ph.D. diss., University of Göteborg, 2002.
48.
49. Ritner, Robert Kreich. The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice. Studies in
50. Ancient Oriental Civilization no. 54. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of
51. Chicago, 1993.

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1. Berthelot, Marcellin and Ch.-Ém. Ruelle, eds and trans. 1967 [1888]. Collection des
2. Anciens Alchimistes Grecs, 3 vols. Osnabrück: Otto Zeller.
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4. Berthelot, Marcellin and R. Duval, eds and trans. 1967 [1893]. La Chimie auMoyen Age,
5. 3 vols. 1893. Osnabrück: Otto Zeller.
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7. Burkhalter, Fabienne. 1998. “La production des objets en metal (or, argent, bronze) en
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9. inCommerce et artisanatdans l’Alexandriehellénistique et romaine:Actesducolloque
10. d’Athènes 11–12 décembre 1988. Edited by Jean-Yves Empereur. Athènes: École fran-
11. çaise d’Athènes.
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13. Chittick, William C. 2012. In Search of the Lost Heart: Explorations in Islamic Thought.
14. Collected essays edited byM. Rustom and A. Kahlil. Albany: State University of New
15. York Press.
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17. Dufault, Olivier. 2019. Early Greek Alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity.
18. Berkeley: California Classical Studies.
19.
20. Grimes, Shannon. 2018. BecomingGold: Zosimos of Panopolis and the Alchemical Arts in
21. Roman Egypt. Panopolis Series vol. 1, ed. A. Cheak. Aukland: Rubedo Press.
22.
23. Grimes, Shannon. 2018(b). “Secrets of the God Makers: Re-thinking the Origins of
24. Greco-Egyptian Alchemy.” Syllecta Classica 29: 67–89.
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26. Gutas, Dmitri. 1999. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. New York: Routledge.
27. Hallum, Benjamin. 2008. Zosimus Arabus: The Reception of Zosimos of Panopolis in the
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29. Arabic/IslamicWorld. PhD diss., Warburg Institute.
30. Hallum, Benjamin. 2009. “TheTome of Images: An Arabic Compilation of Texts by Zosi-
31.
32. mos of Panopolis and a Source of the Turba Philosophorum.”Ambix 56, 1: 76–88.
33. Jackson, Howard, ed. and trans. 1978. Zosimos of Panopolis on the Letter Omega. Society
34.
35. of Biblical Literature Graeco-Roman Religions Series, 5. Missoula: Scholars Press.
36. Jung, C.G. 1970 [1955]. Mysterium Coniunctionis. Translated by R.F.C. Hull. Princeton:
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38. Princeton University Press.
39. Malamud, Margaret. 1996. “Gender and Spiritual Self-Fashioning: The Master-Disciple
40.
41. Relationship in Classical Sufism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64, 1:
42. 89–117.
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44. Martelli, Matteo. 2017. “Translating Ancient Alchemy: Fragments of Graeco-Egyptian
45. Alchemy in Arabic Compendia.” Ambix 64, 4: 326–342.
46.
47. Mertens, Michèle, trans and ed. 2002. Zosime de Panopolis: Mémoires authentiques. Les
48. alchimistes grecs, Vol. iv, Part 1. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
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53.
54. Gnosis 7 (2022) 1–16

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Content Snippet:
1. La Rosa di Paracelso 2/2019
2.
3. Divine Images: Divine Images:
4.
5. Zosimos of Panopolis’s Spiritual Approach to AlchemyZosimos of Panopolis’s Spiritual Approach to Alchemy**
6.
7. Shannon Grimes, Meredith College
8.
9. The works of Zosimos of Panopolis, a renowned Egyptian alchemist writing in
10. the latter part of the third century CE, are unique among the Greco-Egyptian al-
11. chemical corpus because he is the earliest writer to describe a spiritual approach
12. to alchemy in any depth. 1 A.-J. Festugière, who translated some of Zosimos’s
13. writings, dubbed him the “father of religious alchemy.”2 However, the fact that
14. his writings provide the earliest evidence does not necessarily mean that he was
15. the first to take this approach. Zosimos indicates that he was a scribal priest in-
16. volved with the production and consecration of divine statues and other ritual
17. objects; therefore, his profession is embedded in temple traditions that have a
18. long religious and technical history.3 If alchemy originated amongst Egyptian
19. temple metallurgists (and I am convinced that it did), then as a priest, Zosimos
20. is both a steward of these traditions and an innovator in the way he synthesizes
21. different metallurgical techniques and religious ideas into a more universal way
22. of thinking about alchemy.
23.
24. In Roman Egypt, trade guilds were on the rise as temple economies declined;
25. metallurgists from these groups were collaborating and contracting with each
26. other.4 Zosimos’s writings suggest that he was an advisor to metallurgists from
27.
28. * The author would like to thank editor Dr. Michele Olzi for sending her the call for papers for this
29. edition on alchemy, and for extending the deadline once COVID-19 hit.
30. 1 On dates for Zosimos, see Michèle Mertens, Zosime de Panopolis: Mémoires authentiques, 2nd ed.
31. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002), xv–xvi. I will hereafter use Auth.Mem. as an abbreviation for this
32. text, which is a translation of some of Zosimos’s Greek works.
33. 2 André-Jean Festugière, La Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gabalda, 1950),
34. 260-62.
35. 3 On Zosimos as scribal priest see Shannon Grimes, Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and
36. the Alchemical Arts in Roman Egypt (Aukland: Rubedo Press, 2018), 69-76; on alchemy’s roots
37. in Egyptian religious traditions of statue-making, see, for example, Phillipe Derchain, “L’atelier
38. des orfevres a Dendara et les origins de l’alchimie,” Chronique d’Egypte LXV (1990); and Aaron
39. Cheak, “The Perfect Black: Egypt and Alchemy,” in Alchemical Traditions: From Antiquity to the
40. Avant-Garde (Melbourne: Numen Books, 2013), 83-91.
41. 4 Detailed discussions of the economic relationships between temple and trade guild metallurgists
42. in Roman Egypt can be found in Grimes, Becoming Gold, ch. 2; and Shannon Grimes, “Secrets of
43. the God-Makers: Re-thinking the Origins of Greco-Egyptian Alchemy,” Syllecta Classica 29 (2018).
44.
45.
46.
47. La Rosa di Paracelso
48.
49. 70

【17†Divine_Images_Zosimos_of_Panopoliss_Spir.pdf†file_00000000582061f7b5716f4339955194】

Content source: Source.file
Title: Divine_Images_Zosimos_of_Panopoliss_Spir.pdf
Content Snippet:
1. La Rosa di Paracelso 2/2019
2.
3. Divine Images: Divine Images:
4.
5. Zosimos of Panopolis’s Spiritual Approach to AlchemyZosimos of Panopolis’s Spiritual Approach to Alchemy**
6.
7. Shannon Grimes, Meredith College
8.
9. The works of Zosimos of Panopolis, a renowned Egyptian alchemist writing in
10. the latter part of the third century CE, are unique among the Greco-Egyptian al-
11. chemical corpus because he is the earliest writer to describe a spiritual approach
12. to alchemy in any depth. 1 A.-J. Festugière, who translated some of Zosimos’s
13. writings, dubbed him the “father of religious alchemy.”2 However, the fact that
14. his writings provide the earliest evidence does not necessarily mean that he was
15. the first to take this approach. Zosimos indicates that he was a scribal priest in-
16. volved with the production and consecration of divine statues and other ritual
17. objects; therefore, his profession is embedded in temple traditions that have a
18. long religious and technical history.3 If alchemy originated amongst Egyptian
19. temple metallurgists (and I am convinced that it did), then as a priest, Zosimos
20. is both a steward of these traditions and an innovator in the way he synthesizes
21. different metallurgical techniques and religious ideas into a more universal way
22. of thinking about alchemy.
23.
24. In Roman Egypt, trade guilds were on the rise as temple economies declined;
25. metallurgists from these groups were collaborating and contracting with each
26. other.4 Zosimos’s writings suggest that he was an advisor to metallurgists from
27.
28. * The author would like to thank editor Dr. Michele Olzi for sending her the call for papers for this
29. edition on alchemy, and for extending the deadline once COVID-19 hit.
30. 1 On dates for Zosimos, see Michèle Mertens, Zosime de Panopolis: Mémoires authentiques, 2nd ed.
31. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres,
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ZOSIMUS OF PANOPOLIS:

ALCHEMY, NATURE, AND RELIGION IN LATE ANTIQUITY

By

Shannon L. Grimes

B.A., University of Puget Sound, 1993

M.A., California Institute of Integral Studies, 1998

M.Phil., Syracuse University, 2003

DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Religion

in the Graduate School of Syracuse University

May 2006

Approved ___________________________________

Professor Patricia Cox Miller

Date___________________________________

Copyright 2006 Shannon L. Grimes

All rights reserved

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

1. ZOSIMUS AND GRECO-EGYPTIAN ALCHEMY 23

2. ALCHEMY AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE 55

3. JEWISH THOUGHT AND NATURAL VS. UNNATURAL METHODS 88

4. ALCHEMY, THEURGY, AND THE DIVINE COSMOS 119

5. NATURE, CULTURE, AND THE PROBLEM OF COSMIC SYMPATHY 152

CONCLUSION 176

BIBLIOGRAPHY 181

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA 196

1

INTRODUCTION

When studying late antique religions, ancient as well as modern categories of

magic, religion, and science often become quite blurred. Alchemy, which began to

flourish in this period, poses new questions and problems for scholars in regard to these

categories. This dissertation focuses on the Greco-Egyptian alchemist Zosimus of

Panopolis (ca. 270 CE), who was the first to frame alchemy as a chemico-religious

philosophy and practice; he believed that piety, meditation, and divine revelation

contribute to the effective transmutation of metals. Zosimus’s religious interpretations

of alchemy place him at a nexus of late ancient science, religion, and magic that has

rarely been explored. My claim is that by concentrating on Zosimus’s concepts of

“nature” and what is “natural,” we can better understand his perceptions of the

relationships between magic, religion, and science, and that such an analysis has

implications for understanding the complexity and varied use of these categories in late

antiquity, as well as for interrogating modern biases toward magic, religion, and science

in the study of ancient religions.

Historiographical issues in the study of alchemy

Alchemy is typically defined as the practice of transmuting base metals into

gold, and such practices are considered to be the origins of modern chemistry.

“Western” alchemy (as opposed to Chinese or Indian alchemy, which have somewhat

different aims and practices) is thought to have originated in Greece or Egypt at the

dawn of the common era. The earliest Greco-Egyptian alchemical texts were written in

Greek and incorporate ideas from Hellenistic philosophy and religion. Many of the

2

texts were also translated into Arabic and Syriac, and alchemy flourished among Arab

scientists and philosophers during the so-called Dark Ages of Europe. Europeans

began to take a serious interest in alchemy in the early twelfth century, shortly after the

Crusades, and it was practiced there until the eighteenth century, when it underwent a

virtual demise during the Enlightenment. Religious language and imagery are

hallmarks of alchemical literature, and the demise of alchemy was in part due to new

understandings of chemistry that refuted alchemical notions of transmutation, but also

related to general tendencies toward the secularization of scientific knowledge in

modern Europe.
1

Alchemy is often labeled as a “pseudo-science” and associated with magic and

occultism. Laurence Principe and William Newman claim that these characterizations

are related to two basic approaches to the historiography of alchemy, which have their

roots in Enlightenment scientific debates as well as in Romantic critiques of Newtonian

science. The first approach, which I will call the Enlightenment approach, dates from

the beginning of the eighteenth century when etymological distinctions between

“alchemy” and “chemistry” began appearing in force as an attempt to distinguish

alchemy from the burgeoning science of chemistry.
2
Prior to this time, the terms

“alchemy” and “chemistry” had been used interchangeably in reference to chemical

experiments, pharmacology, and to gold-making, but in the eighteenth century

“alchemy” came to be used almost exclusively to designate gold-making practices,

1 There are several general histories of alchemy available. See E.J. Holmyard, Alchemy (New York:
Dover Publications, 1990 [1957]); and Allison Coudert, Alchemy: The Philosopher’s Stone (London:

Wildwood House, 1980).
2 Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman, “Some Problems with the Historiography of

Alchemy,” in Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, ed. W. Newman and

A. Grafton (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 386.

3

which were now more widely associated with charlatanism and fraud.
3
Principe and

Newman point out that Enlightenment writers often described chemistry as a light

triumphantly shining forth from the obscure and deluded darkness of the alchemical

past. These Enlightenment metaphors and attitudes continue to appear in contemporary

histories of alchemy.
4

The initial consequence of this separation of alchemy and chemistry, or, in

Principe and Newman’s terms, “the recasting of alchemy as ‘other’ to chemistry,” is

that the religious and esoteric aspects of alchemy became more pronounced. In the

eighteenth century, Pietists, masons, and secret societies began using alchemical

imagery in exclusively spiritual contexts (i.e., divorcing the religious symbolism from

its meaning in the laboratory). By the nineteenth century alchemy was largely

associated with natural magic, theurgy, astrology, and other so-called occult sciences.
5

The association of alchemy and the occult has often been used to discredit alchemy, to

reinforce a distinction between “rational” chemistry and “irrational” alchemy.

However, nineteenth-century occultists (the interest in occultism in this period is

attributed to Romantic influences
6
) celebrated and popularized the notion of alchemy as

an esoteric mystical practice. They claimed that the chemical operations were actually

codes for spiritual realities, used as a foil to conceal the mystical wisdom of alchemy

from the uninitiated. This esoteric interpretation of alchemy, which Principe and

3 A fuller treatment of this etymological shift can be found in another article by the same authors. See

W. Newman and L. Principe, “Alchemy vs. Chemistry: The Etymological Origins of a Historiographical

Mistake,” Early Science and Medicine 3 (1998): 32-65.
4 Ibid. Many scholarly works on early Greco-Egyptian alchemy, especially those written by historians of

science, convey these “Enlightenment” attitudes. See, for example, F. Sherwood Taylor, The Alchemists
(St. Albans: Paladin, 1976 [1952]); A.J. Hopkins, Alchemy: Child of Greek Philosophy, (New York:

AMS Press, 1967 [1933]); and a more recent article by P.T. Keyser, “Alchemy in the Ancient World:

From Science to Magic,” Illinois Classical Studies 15 (1990): 353-378.
5 Principe and Newman, “Some Problems with the Historiography of Alchemy,” 387.
6 Ibid., 385.

4

Newman call the “spiritual” interpretation, has been influential in twentieth-century

studies of alchemy, both popular and academic. The authors cite C.G. Jung and Mircea

Eliade, along with a few historians of science, as examples of a predominantly

“spiritual” approach because of their claims that alchemy is essentially a psychological

and spiritual pursuit, and that chemistry plays only a secondary role, if it is even

practiced at all.
7

Principe and Newman argue that while alchemy was often expressed in

religious language, it was rarely, if ever, a spiritual practice entirely divorced from

laboratory work, and that the religious language of alchemy needs to be decoded into a

“language of the laboratory and of natural philosophy.”
8
I argue that in Zosimus’s case,

it is not always possible to translate his religious language into laboratory operations, or

vice versa, and furthermore, that his natural philosophy is primarily a religious

philosophy. The religious and practical aspects of alchemy should be understood in

tandem, especially when focusing specifically on alchemy as a body of theory and

practice, and I will avoid the “spiritual” approach, which reduces chemical language to

codes for psychological and spiritual processes, and also take care not to view the

religious language merely as codes for chemical operations, though they may indeed

operate as such in some cases.

While I think that the religious and practical aspects of alchemy should be

understood in tandem, I also think that to some extent they can (or should) at times be

7 Jung’s psychological theories of alchemy have been enormously influential on twentieth-century

alchemical scholarship, including Eliade’s treatment of the subject. Principe and Newman do not discuss

the notion promoted by Antoine Faivre and others that alchemy is part of a pervasive religious current in
Western culture, which has been dubbed “Western esotericism.” This approach to the study of alchemy

would no doubt fall under the rubric of “spiritual” interpretations. For examples of the “Western

esoteric” approach to alchemy, see Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994),

esp. Part One and pp. 13, 52.
8 Principe and Newman, “Some Problems with the Historiography of Alchemy,” 418.

5

considered separately. The religious and philosophical dimensions of alchemical

thought are often inspired by ideas circulating in the culture at large—in the case of

Greco-Egyptian alchemy these would include Neoplatonism, Hermetism, Judaism, and

“magical” lore, to name a few. In this sense the religious aspects of alchemy can be

studied apart from the technical, if we are looking, for example, at Zosimus’s religious

thought as an expression of his cultural milieu. Zosimus believes that divine revelation,

meditation, and piety are crucial to his work; he often chastises other alchemists for

their ignorance of divine reality and associates his rivals with magic and deceit. Yet it

is important to note that many of his alchemical recipes have nothing to do with

religion whatsoever. This indicates that Zosimus’s religious thought and practical work

are not always continuous. To study the religious and practical aspects of alchemy in

tandem, then, involves paying attention to when they are fused together, and when they

are not.

Principe and Newman also note, rightly, that scholars should not essentialize

alchemy by viewing it as a unified phenomenon, but should rather aim to study the

diversity and complexity of alchemy in particular historical contexts. I hope to

contribute to this effort with this case study of Zosimus of Panopolis. One of my

concerns has been whether or not to use the term “alchemy” in describing Zosimus’s

work, because the term is anachronistic for this time period. What we call “alchemy” is

most often called the “Sacred Art” (hiera technē) by early Greco-Egyptian alchemists;

they also use the terms chrūsopoēia and argūropoēia (gold-making and silver-making),

6

and, more rarely, they call it chēmia (also chūmia).
9
However, I have decided to retain

use of the term “alchemy” because it is an Arabic term that was probably derived from

the chēmia of the Greco-Egyptian alchemists, and in modern parlance it denotes an art

of transmuting metals that has religious dimensions, and this aptly describes my

subject.
10

I use it with an awareness of the connotations it has—alchemy as a form of

magic or “occultish” pseudo-science—in hopes that I can dispel some of these

stereotypes, not perpetuate them. I also use it with an awareness of its etymological

history and the way it has been portrayed by historians since the eighteenth century,

though I disagree with the way Principe and Newman have situated debates over

physical and spiritual chemistry solely in a modern historiographical context.

Distinctions between technical and spiritual approaches to chemistry can be found

throughout the entire history of Western alchemical literature as internal debates

between alchemists themselves, and these may have contributed to “modern”

interpretations of alchemy. Alchemical literature, including Zosimus’s writings, often

contains polemics against other alchemists, and this illustrates how a variety of

“alchemies” were operating and perceived in different time periods. These differences

and internal debates should not be overlooked.

9
Zosimus’s use of the term chēmia is one of the earliest instances of the word. There is much

speculation about where this term comes from, but its exact etymological origins remain unknown.

Arabs added the definite article al to this term, which gives us our word “alchemy.” See Newman and

Principe, “Alchemy vs. Chemistry,” 38; Robert Halleux, Les Textes Alchimiques (Turnhout, Belgium:

Brepols, 1979), 45-47; and Jack Lindsay, The Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt (London:

Frederick Muller, 1970), ch. 4.
10 F. S. Taylor bases his definition of alchemy on the title and contents of one of the earliest Greco-

Egyptian alchemical manuscripts, the Phūsika kai Mūstika of Ps.-Democritus. He says that this title

“succinctly expresses…the nature of the Art it describes—which may be defined as:--An art, purporting

to relate to the transmutation of metals, and described in a terminology at once Physical and Mystical.”

See Taylor, “The Origins of Greek Alchemy,” Ambix 1 (1937-38), 30.

7

Magic, Religion, and Science

Is Greco-Egyptian alchemy best understood as a form of magic, science, or

religion? Contemporary scholarship on early alchemy—and there is not much of it—

shows a tendency to classify alchemy under one or another of these headings. Most

often it is presented either as a type of ancient science, or as a form of ancient magic.
11

Naomi Janowitz, who has recently made an attempt to “rescue” alchemy from its

association with magic, treats it as a form of ritual practice, thereby placing alchemy

closer to the sphere of “religion.”
12

The problem with relegating alchemy to a

particular category within what Bronislaw Malinowski has called the “three-cornered

constellation” of magic-religion-science is that it skews our understanding of

alchemy.
13

When treated as ancient science, the chemical operations and natural

philosophy get emphasized; when treated as magic or religion, the mystical and

ritualistic elements are brought to the fore. I have already argued that the practical and

religious aspects of alchemy need to be understood in tandem, but I will add here that

Greco-Egyptian alchemy also needs to be understood as an amalgamation of magic,

science, and religion. In this era alchemy exhibits both scientific and religious

characteristics, and also incorporates legendary figures such as Ostanes and Ps-

Democritus, who were renowned as “magicians” (magoi) in late antiquity, as well as

11 See, for example, G. Irby-Massie and P.T. Keyser, Greek Science of the Hellenistic Era (London:

Routledge, 2002), ch. 9; Georg Luck, Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman

Worlds (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1985), ch. 6; and Naomi Janowitz, Magic in the

Roman World (London: Routledge, 2001), ch. 4.
12 N. Janowitz, Icons of Power: Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania

State University Press, 2002), ch. 7. On her goal of rescuing these rituals, see p. xiii.
13 Malinowski portrayed the “three-cornered constellation” of magic-science-religion as interrelated

components of society and of human thought. See Magic, Science, Religion and Other Essays (Glencoe,

IL: The Free Press, 1948); he uses the term “three-cornered constellation” on p. 69. See also Walter

Capps’s discussion of how this contributed to a more “organic” model for thinking about magic, science,

and religion in Religious Studies: The Making of a Discipline (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 98.

8

certain practices, such as using astrological calculations and invoking daemons, which

some people considered to be “magical.” Alchemical literature from this period also

reveals a preoccupation with magic, religion, and science as competing forms of

knowledge. For example, Zosimus, who believes that nature can only be understood

through divine revelation, criticizes Aristotle’s works as being inspired merely by

daemons, and not by gods, which is akin to saying that Aristotelian science is too

“materialistic.” Zosimus is also critical of magic, and he chastises alchemists who

practice it.

A fuller understanding of Zosimus and Greco-Egyptian alchemy can be

achieved by looking at how the interrelationships between magic, religion, and science

are operating within alchemy as well as in the broader context of late ancient culture.

The interrelationships between magic-science-religion are protean in nature, always

shifting as they take on different associations, values, and connotations in particular

times, places, and individuals. These categories are also problematic: they often

overlap, and to designate something as magic, science, or religion is often tied to

personal or cultural biases regarding their validity as epistemologies and practices. My

study of Zosimus also addresses how these categories are perceived in modern Western

culture and presented in our scholarship, and how modern notions of magic, science,

and religion have clouded our understanding of ancient alchemy.

Magic, religion, and science, and how they relate to one another, has of course

been a much-debated issue by anthropologists and scholars of religion. Scholars have

proposed various relationships among the three categories, and magic is always the

most problematic of the three. James Frazer and E.B. Tylor, who conceived of an

9

evolutionary scheme in which human thought evolves from magical to religious to

scientific ways of thinking, associated magic with science because they both share an

empirical basis, though they claim that magic is “bad” science, or “pseudo-science”

because it gives faulty results. As I have shown, alchemy has often been

conceptualized this way, as a type of magic or pseudo-science as opposed to the

rational science of chemistry. Magic and religion have also been grouped together as

“sacred” forms of knowledge, as opposed to the “profane” or secular knowledge of

science.
14

When religion and magic are associated, magic is usually treated as an

inferior or deviant form of religion. As Jonathan Z. Smith argues,

[I]n academic discourse “magic” has almost always been treated as a contrast

term, a shadow reality known only by looking at the reflection of its opposite

(“religion,” “science”) in a distorting fun-house mirror. Or, to put this another

way, within the academy, “magic” has been made to play the role of an

evaluative rather than an interpretive term, and, as such, usually bears a negative

valence.
15

Current attempts to “rescue” rituals from their association with magic and reclassify

them as “religious” are common amongst contemporary scholars of late antiquity, and

this is usually to avoid the negative connotations of magic.
16

This negative evaluation

of magic is not always the case with alchemy, however, for alchemy—especially when

it is viewed as a form of magic or occult science—has been treated by scholars as a

14 Malinowski made this sacred/profane distinction in Magic, Science, Religion and Other Essays (1948).

Cf. Stanley Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1990), 67.
15 J.Z. Smith, “Trading Places,” Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, ed. M. Meyer and P. Mirecki (Boston:

Brill, 2001), 16.
16 Scholars of ancient magic debate over whether magic should more properly be considered as

“religion,” whether we should use magic as a descriptive or theoretical category in second-order

discourse or abandon it, etc. Because magic is, as J.Z. Smith claims, a “shadowy other” often defined in
contrast to religion or science, there is even the question of whether we can call magic a category of

thought, for it almost always turns up empty (see Smith, “Trading Places,” 16). However, the category

does persist, as people of different times and places have imagined “magical” forms of knowledge. I see

no reason to abandon it, only to use it cautiously, with an awareness of its elusive quality and our own

individual and/or cultural biases toward the term.

10

repository of spiritual wisdom. This view is typical of “spiritual” interpreters of

alchemy, who distinguish the “sacred” (magical/religious) aspects of alchemy from a

“profane” emphasis on physical chemistry. Magic is still an evaluative term in this

case, but with a positive valence rather than a negative one.

Religion and science can, of course, be evaluative terms as well. When magic is

considered inferior to either of them, there is an implicit claim that religion and science

are better paths to knowledge, that they are more appropriate means of seeking truth.

These truth claims can be deeply ingrained ways of thinking that we may not

necessarily be aware of. Scholars who have deconstructed modern theories of magic,

religion, and science have revealed some of the truth claims implicit within those

theories, such as the modernist (and colonialist) biases toward rationality, progress,

objectivity, and empiricism that are often at play and used as “yardsticks” with which to

measure other cultures.
17

These biases are often viewed as legacies from the scientific

revolution of the Enlightenment era, and also from Protestantism, which shares

Enlightenment values of progress and reason. Keith Thomas, for example, has argued

that modern distinctions between magic and religion have their roots in Protestant

criticisms of Catholic ritualism, which Protestants condemned as “sacramental

magic.”
18

More recently, Peter Pels has claimed that “modern discourses position

magic as their antithesis, reinventing it in the process,” and shows how fetishism,

shamanism, magic, and occultism have been defined by scholars as the antithesis of

modernity, either directly, as when these are considered to be backward, irrational

17 See, for example, Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality; and B. Meyer and

P. Pels, eds., Magic and Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
18 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 51-57;

see also Tambiah’s discussion of Thomas in Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope of Rationality, 18-

19.

11

beliefs, or by way of comparison, as when modern occultism is studied as a

counterpoint or response to modernist notions of development and rationality.
19

Of course, biases regarding magic, religion, and science can be found operating

in ancient truth claims, as well.
20

As G.E.R. Lloyd has argued, the ancient Greeks had

categories of thought that are commensurable with our own notions of magic, religion,

and science.
21

The terms mageia and magoi (“magicians”) originally referred to

Persian priests. Zoroaster, for example, was hailed as the father of the magoi.
22

By the

latter fifth and early fourth centuries BCE, these terms were used to describe various

non-civic (often foreign) religious practices, including ecstatic forms of worship,

mystery cults, and people who were religious healers and itinerant beggar priests.
23

The term “magic” was most often used polemically, as a way of discrediting these

practices, but sometimes it was used positively, in idealizing the magical wisdom and

powers of the ancients, or of holy people, especially those from the East.

There is no equivalent term for our word “religion” in ancient Greece, but the

concept is reflected in the classical period as traditional civic piety and worship of the

gods. New concepts of “religion” also formed in this period, such as Plato’s

philosophical notions of transcendence and purification of the soul. The Greeks often

thought of religion and magic in terms of acceptable and marginal practices. When

19 See Pels’s introduction to Magic and Modernity, 4. Principe and Newman’s study of how modern

historiographies of alchemy are rooted in Enlightenment/Romantic debates can be seen as an example of

this latter “counterpoint” approach.
20 This is not to say that scholars in other fields are unaware of this. Tambiah notes, for example, that

modernist distinctions between religion and magic are similar to notions of magic in ancient Greece, as

well as to notions of idolatry in the Hebrew Bible. See Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope
of Rationality, 6-11, 19.
21 See G.E.R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason, and Experience (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999).
22 The word magos was originally used as a term for Persian priests or religious wise men. Herotodus,

Xenophon, and Plato all describe the magoi as Persian priests. See Graf, Magic in the Ancient World, 20.
23 Ibid., 21, 34.

12

mystery cults became more popular and widespread in the Hellenistic period, these

came to be considered less as “magical” or marginal religious practices, and more as

normative ones.

A rough equivalent for “scientists” in Greek is phūsiologoi, or nature

philosophers; this is what Aristotle called the Presocratic philosophers who attempted

to explain the causes and structure of the physical world.
24

Lloyd has identified three

criteria by which we can claim that the Greeks possessed similar concepts to modern

science:

1) The demarcation of natural and divine causes.

2) The development of mathematics and logical argumentation, used to formulate

demonstrations and proofs.

3) Increasing use of methods of demonstration and proof, combined with empirical

observation and research, to extend the empirical base of knowledge.
25

Ancient Greece had its mathematicians, physicists, astronomers, geographers,

physicians, zoologists, and so forth, all of whom were inquirers into nature and

exhibited some form of scientific reasoning. However, religion and science were often

closely intertwined in natural philosophy: nearly all philosophers believed that nature

was divine, though they had differing conceptions of nature and the divine. Some

science bordered on the mystical, such as the mathematics of Pythagoras, who was

reputed to be a holy man. And natural sciences were sometimes associated with magic,

especially medicine and astrology, which was considered a branch of astronomy.
26

As Lloyd and many others have noted, these demarcations between magic,

science, and religion (especially philosophical religion as opposed to traditional

24 Lloyd, Magic, Reason, and Experience, 32.
25 I am paraphrasing Tambiah’s summary of Lloyd’s criteria. See Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion

and the Scope of Rationality, 9.
26 Pliny (1st c. CE), for example, claims that magic originated from medicine combined with astrology.

See Pliny, Natural History 30.1.1.

13

religion) arose out of debates in the sixth-to-fourth centuries BCE over differing

conceptions of divinity and nature. The Presocratic nature philosophers rejected

traditional notions of the gods, and though they conceived of nature as a divine force,

their explanations of the universe were often materialistic. Anaxagoras, for example,

famously claimed that Helios, the sun god, is nothing but a glowing lump of metal.
27

Plato’s philosophical understanding of religion, and his critiques of traditional civic

religion, arose from such debates. These debates also helped to shape magic as a

category of thought. This is evident in a late fifth-century medical text, On the Sacred

Disease, in which divine causes for epilepsy are rejected in favor of natural ones. The

author writes:

In my opinion, those who first attributed a sacred character to this malady were

like the magicians, purifiers, begging priests and charlatans of our own day,

men who claim great piety and superior knowledge. Being at a loss and having

no treatment that would help, they sheltered themselves behind the divine and

called this illness sacred, in order to conceal their utter ignorance.
28

In late antiquity, magic, religion, and science take on additional meanings and

configurations. The configuration that I will be focusing on is how “religious” truth

claims are privileged over “scientific” and “magical” ones. We see this in Zosimus,

who thinks that magic and Aristotelian science are inferior forms of knowledge, and

that “true” knowledge is acquired through divine revelation. Neoplatonist philosophers

of this era, such as the theurgist Iamblichus, make similar claims.
29

E.R. Dodds has

famously described the intellectual climate of this age as a “return of the irrational,”

27

See Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 316.
28 Cited from Graf, Magic in the Ancient World, 30-31.
29 Iamblichus thinks that theurgy, which involves divine revelation, is superior to philosophical
knowledge that involves “conjecture or opinion or some form of syllogistic reasoning.” DM I.3. Clarke,

et al., say that this is a reference to Aristotelian syllogistic. See Emma Clarke, et al., Iamblichus: De

Mysteriis (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 15, n. 27. On “anti-Aristotelian” sentiments in

Neoplatonic nature philosophy, see S. Sambursky, The Physical World of Late Antiquity (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1962).

14

which began in the Hellenistic era with the decline of Greek rationalism (i.e., science

and philosophy), and the rise of “magical” systems such as astrology and theories of

cosmic sympathy that were allegedly systematized by Bolus of Mendes (c. 200 BCE).
30

Alchemy, which arose during this period, is often classified as one of these irrational,

magical pseudo-sciences that mark the decline of Greek rationality.
31

Dodds, of course,

is not responsible for creating this portrayal of alchemy, but his emphasis on rationality

and irrationality is emblematic of the way alchemy has been portrayed since the

Enlightenment, and remains deeply ingrained in our perceptions of alchemy. My intent

is not so much to rescue alchemy from its association with magic, but rather from

viewing it through modernist lenses of rationality versus irrationality. This tendency is

prevalent in most of the available scholarship on early Greco-Egyptian alchemy, and it

obscures our understanding of alchemy rather than elucidating it.

Peter Brown rejects Dodds’s picture of late antiquity as an age of irrational

superstition and intellectual deprivation, and argues that the increasing emphasis on

magic and miracles in this period is due to a shift in the “locus of the supernatural.” He

writes:

In this period, “divine power” came to be defined with increasing clarity as the

opposite of all other forms of power. The “locus of the supernatural,” where

this unique power was operative, came to stand for a zone in human life where

decisions, obligations, experiences, and information were deemed to come from

outside the human community.
32

30 E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), 244-247.
Bolus of Mendes, who is called “The Democritian,” is presumed by some scholars to be the author of a

well-known alchemical text called Phūsika kai Mūstika, attributed to Democritus.
31 This view is reiterated in most of the scholarship available on Greek science and early alchemy. See,

for example, Sambursky, The Physical World of Late Antiquity, xii, 59.
32 Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 11.

15

Brown explains that the question of whether beliefs and practices were rational or

irrational was not debated as much as the legitimacy of different forms of supernatural

power, especially “heavenly” and “earthly” powers.
33

Brown’s emphasis on the locus

and legitimacy of supernatural powers (which are also associated with forms of

knowledge) is useful, and, I think, an accurate depiction of late ancient concerns.

However, as Janowitz has pointed out, various beliefs and practices that scholars have

deemed “supernatural” were often considered natural by ancient standards, and in

many cases scholars have translated the word “natural” (phūsikos) in ancient texts as

“supernatural” or “magical,” which obscures the original meaning.
34

Therefore, I will

be cautious in translating these terms so that I can depict more accurately ancient

concepts.

In order to understand Zosimean alchemy, I will be examining the distinctions

and continuities between nature and the divine that are at the heart of debates over

magical, religious, and scientific knowledge in late antiquity. Late antique religion and

philosophy is preeminently concerned with cosmology, due to new understandings of

the cosmos advanced by astronomers in Plato’s day and perfected by Ptolemy in the

second century CE. According to this cosmology, the earth is surrounded by concentric

planetary spheres, and the fixed stars are viewed as the border between the cosmos and

the divine realms beyond. “Nature” often designated everything below the fixed stars,

as well as the divine force that governed the cosmos; it is sometimes associated with

Fate. Knowledge and power were also located on this cosmic map. In the religious

33 Ibid., 61.
34 Janowitz, Magic in the Roman World, 68-69. Liddell and Scott also note that in the third century CE,

phūsikos begins to take on supernatural or magical connotations. See the entry for phūsikos in Liddell

and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940).

16

imaginary of late antiquity, the cosmic and divine realms were populated by daemons,

angels, and various other powers, and knowledge was associated with various beings

from the different realms. For example, daemons from the realms beneath the fixed

stars granted cosmic knowledge and power. This type of knowledge was attributed to

magicians, as well as to people immersed in worldly knowledge and worldly affairs.

Holy or pious people, on the other hand, were allegedly in direct contact with beings in

the divine realms beyond the cosmos, and their knowledge and powers were therefore

considered superior because they came from a higher, purer source. There were, of

course, different attitudes toward nature and the divine operating in this time period, but

this cosmic map was used by a variety of religious and philosophical groups as a way

of identifying various forms of knowledge and power, and in determining what Brown

calls the “locus of the supernatural.” This cosmic map figures prominently in

Zosimus’s thought, and I will use it to locate his views of nature and the divine and

how this translates into his work with metals.

Methodology and Chapter Summaries

As I have already indicated, my approach to Zosimean alchemy is aligned with

contemporary trends in scholarship that aim to understand ancient beliefs and practices

from the perspective of the practitioners. This is not simply to take them at face value,

however, but also to look for motives and other considerations that may lead them to

portray their beliefs and practices in a particular light. Kenneth Burke’s work on

understanding human motivations is helpful in this regard, particularly his notion of

rhetoric as identification, which is premised on his theory that language is symbolic

action, and that actions arise from motives. According to Burke, the “basic function of

17

rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in

other human agents….”
35

By analyzing the ways in which a person identifies with

certain people, groups, ideas, or imagery and distances him/herself from others, one can

gain insight into a person’s motives and into the nature of motivation in general. Burke

explains that identification also extends beyond a person’s autonomous activities:

Any specialized activity participates in a larger unit of action. “Identification”

is a word for the autonomous activity’s place in this wider context, a place with

which the agent may be unconcerned. The shepherd qua shepherd acts for the

good of the sheep, to protect them from discomfiture and harm. But he may be

“identified” with a project that is raising the sheep for market.
36

Zosimus’s writings are largely comprised of letters to his associates, and he

aims to teach and to persuade them of the validity of certain beliefs and practices—both

religious and technical. Following Burke’s theory of rhetoric as identification, I will be

paying attention to the people and ideas that Zosimus affiliates with, as well as those he

distances himself from. I will begin by examining Zosimus’s “autonomous” alchemical

practices and the dynamics of his industry, and proceed to look at his religious thought

in light of religious and philosophical ideas circulating amongst his associates and in

the culture at large. I will also be looking at how identification operates in natural and

divine contexts, such as the way Zosimus identifies with the “spirits” of the metals and

with daemons, angels, and other divine beings.

The first chapter of this dissertation is an introduction to Zosimus and early

Greco-Egyptian alchemy. Historians of early alchemy often overlook the industrial

contexts of alchemy, other than to speculate that alchemy originated in Egyptian

temples or was practiced by dyers, jewelers, and counterfeiters. I argue that Zosimus

35 Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), 41.
36 Ibid., 27.

18

probably began his career as a priest and statue-maker in an Egyptian temple, and that

his craft is largely concerned with the coloration of metals. Furthermore, I argue that

early alchemical notions of transmutation are based on changes in color, not with

fundamental changes in the nature of the metals themselves. That is to say, they did not

believe that they were changing base metals into gold; they were quite aware that they

were coloring metals. I also discuss Zosimus’s affiliations and rivalries with other

alchemists, and how his theories of alchemy compare to those of other early alchemists.

In the second chapter I use Pierre Hadot’s work on “spiritual exercises” in

ancient philosophy in order to illustrate and contextualize Zosimus’s concepts of

alchemy as a spiritual practice. I give a close reading of On Excellence, Zosimus’s

allegory of the alchemical opus, in which he portrays alchemy as a sacrificial ritual.

This allegory is the most famous of Zosimus’s works, and I argue that this text needs to

be understood in the context of late ancient debates over animal sacrifice and how

meditation, or offering one’s thoughts to God, was being touted as a more pious form of

sacrifice, and also as a spiritual practice whereby the divine would reveal the mysteries

of the cosmos.

Zosimus frequently praises the Hebrews—particularly an alchemist named

Maria the Jewess—for their skill in metallurgy. In the third chapter I argue that

Zosimus was attempting to synthesize Egyptian and Jewish metallurgical techniques,

and that since he had a religious approach to alchemy, this synthesis was religious as

well as technical. I demonstrate the ways in which Zosimus uses Jewish and Christian

thought to differentiate between “natural” and “unnatural” methods of alchemy, and I

argue that various concepts of Fate, divine power and the natural order are at the heart

19

of these alchemical debates over divine (natural) versus daemonic (unnatural)

revelation.

Alchemy is often associated with theurgy, but no attempts have been made to

provide detailed comparisons of the two. In Chapter Four I compare Zosimean

alchemy with the theurgical writings of Iamblichus and argue that they share similar

foundations, especially their critiques of human reason and insistence that higher

knowledge comes through divine revelation; their ritual use of material objects to

sympathetically link the natural and divine realms and thereby facilitate the soul’s

ascent; and their integration of science and religion (Iamblichus is a Pythagorean

mathematician). I contend that theurgy is a scientific ideal as well as a religious one,

and I illustrate this through the figures of the Hermetic and Pythagorean sage, who are

upheld by Zosimus and Iamblichus as models of a theurgical approach to science.

Cosmic sympathy, the theory that all parts of the universe are connected by

invisible forces that link the microcosm to the macrocosm, is a hallmark of late ancient

views of nature. It is also a hallmark of the “new sciences” which begin to appear in

this period, such as alchemy and astrology. In the concluding chapter I argue that

cosmic sympathy is a major obstacle to understanding ancient science and religion,

since modern views of nature
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UNDER A STAR-SPANGLED BANNER:
POLITICS AND ASTRAL RELIGION

IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Shannon Grimes

ABSTRACT: The belief that the stars and planets are gods—a notion borrowed from ancient
Near Eastern cultures—entered into Greek thought with a force in the fourth century
BCE. A new cosmology also developed during this time, and this focus on the stars gave
rise to new understandings of religion and the soul. This paper briefly describes the rise
of astral religion in the Hellenistic age, but its primary focus is on the ways in which the
stars were represented in Roman political discourse. Not only were the Roman emperors
portrayed as astral gods on Earth, I argue that the political elite also utilized astral
religion as a means of promoting imperial goals, such as the upholding of social order
and obedience to Roman law. Cosmic imagery served to naturalize these imperial goals
and to convincingly present them as divine will. Furthermore, drawing on postcolonial
theories that aim to recover the voices and perspectives of the colonized, I also argue that
the political dimensions of astral religion might have some bearing on the rise of cosmic
dualism in the first centuries CE, particularly among Jewish and Christian Gnostics who
viewed the cosmos as a prison run by despots and false gods, and who sought to escape
to their true spiritual home beyond the stars.


The Hellenistic Age (332 BCE-4th c. CE) was a time of great political, economic,
and cultural expansion for the Greeks and Romans, who had set out to conquer
and rule the known world.1 An interesting development in the Greco-Roman
religious imagination also occurred during this time, as people began to
envision the stars and planets in new ways. The belief that the stars and planets
are gods—a notion borrowed from ancient Near Eastern cultures—entered into
Greek thought in the fourth century BCE, while advances in astronomy led one
of Plato’s students, Eudoxus of Cnidos, to formulate a new geometric model of
the universe based on rotating geocentric, homocentric spheres.2 This geocentric
model was refined by subsequent astronomers, including Ptolemy (90-168 CE),
whose version became the standard cosmology in the West until it was upended

1 I am using the fourth century CE as a terminus ad quem for the Hellenistic period to
encompass the influence of Greek language and learning, as well as the pagan dominance
of the empire, which began to wane after Constantine.
2 On the rise of astral religion among the Greeks, see Franz Cumont’s classic work,
Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
1912), 23-30. On Eudoxus of Cnidos, see M. R. Wright, Cosmology in Antiquity (London:
Routledge, 1995), p. 26.

Shannon Grimes 48

by the heliocentric models of the Copernican Revolution in the 16th century.3 The
blending of religion and science in the Hellenistic Age gave rise to different
forms of astral religion, including various systems of astrology, methods for
securing the favors of astral deities, and mystical journeys through the seven
heavens, but here I will be focusing particularly on how certain aspects of astral
religion were adopted and utilized by Roman imperial powers. Not only were
the Roman emperors portrayed as astral gods on earth, but astral imagery, I
argue, was used to ‘naturalize’ the universalist goals of the Pax Romana.

My political reading of astral religion is informed by Bruce Lincoln’s work on
the role of discourse (both verbal and symbolic) as a key instrument in social
construction. Those in power can use symbolic discourse strategically to
encourage obedience, suppress deviance, and mask inequities. Conversely,
subordinate groups can use the same symbols to critique, deconstruct, and de-
legitimize the forces and discourses that contribute to their subordination.4 In
this political reading of astral religion, I examine how discourse about the stars
supported imperial goals, and how it was also used to criticize and challenge
them. I will demonstrate this by comparing Mithraism, which uses astral
religion and the new cosmology in ways that uphold imperial social ideals, with
certain Judeo-Christian ‘Gnostic’ writings that challenge imperial structures in
their portrayals of the stars and planets as oppressive cosmic forces.

Astral religion comes in many forms, but there are few key concepts that
became prominent in Roman political discourse. The first is the philosophical
notion that the stars were divine, rational beings, whose orderly, predictable
journeys across the sky were viewed as proof that the universe was intelligently
designed and providentially governed. Plato was the first to articulate this, and
it was also a popular topic in Stoic philosophy.

Now, the Greek word kosmos has many definitions. In Plato’s Timaeus (ca. 360
BCE)—which was the first extant account of creation to incorporate the new
geocentric cosmology—he says that the divine stars were created as an
adornment (kosmos) for the heavens.5 Our word ‘cosmetics’ preserves this
ancient meaning of cosmos as decoration. Cosmos could also mean universe,
world, ruler and government. In all of its uses it denotes something well-
ordered or well-arranged, whether that be a decoration, the structure of the
universe, or government rule. The semantic link between the stars and world
order was not lost on the Stoics, who described the stars as citizens of the
universe, as gods that unite all of humanity in a common worship under
common laws, and who reveal God’s providential care and governance. Cicero,
for example, portrayed the cosmos as ‘a city of gods and men’ and argued that
all of us cosmopolitans, or citizens of the world, have a duty to uphold the cosmic

3 See Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of
Western Thought (1957; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).
4 Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989), pp. 1-9.
5 Plato, Timaeus, trans. F. M. Cornford (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), 40a.

Under a Star-Spangled Banner: Politics and Astral Religion in the Roman Empire 49

law and order revealed by the heavens.6 Of course, the astral theologies that
developed in the Hellenistic Age coincided with the expansion of the Greek and
Roman empires and the new cosmopolitanism and ‘world order’ that was being
created. Not only did the stars serve as a model for the rational ordering of the
human soul, they also served as a model for political governance. The stars were
functioning as an emblem of the universal goals of the Pax Romana, uniting all
people under common rule and law, thereby creating a well-ordered society. It
is not surprising, then, that the administration of the stars was mapped onto
human forms of administration. Manilius, a Roman astronomer who composed
a lengthy didactic poem about the stars for the emperor Augustus, associates the
planets with the ruling classes, and the numerous stars of the Milky Way with
the innumerable citizens of the world. He wrote:

And as in great cities the inhabitants are divided into classes, whereof the senate
enjoys primacy and the equestrian order importance next to this, and one may see
the knights followed by the commons, the commons by the idle proletariat, and
finally the innominate throng, so too in the mighty heavens there exists a
commonwealth wrought by nature, which has founded a city in the sky. There are
luminaries of princely rank and stars which come close to this highest eminence;
there are all the grades and privileges of superior orders. But outnumbering all
these is the populace which revolves about heaven’s dome; had nature given it
powers consonant with its legions, the very empyrean would be helpless before its
fires, and the whole universe would become embroiled in the flames of a blazing
sky.7

This text argues that social hierarchy and order are reflected in the hierarchy of
stars in the astral commonwealth: as above, so below.
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SYLLECTA CLASSICA 29 (2018): 67–89

SECRETS OF THE GOD MAKERS: RE-THINKING THE
ORIGINS OF GRECO-EGYPTIAN ALCHEMY

Shannon Grimes

Abstract: The earliest alchemical texts have an Egyptian provenance
and date to the Roman period. Surprisingly little attention is given
to the socio-cultural contexts of the craftsmen who produced them.
This paper argues that alchemy originated in the Egyptian priest-
hood among temple metallurgists who were responsible for making
cultic objects. Access to metallurgical recipes was restricted, but with
the rise of trade guilds in the Roman period, craft secrets began to
circulate more freely. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate
that these economic shifts are the best explanation for the emergence
of alchemical texts in Roman Egypt.*

Keywords: Greco-Egyptian Alchemy, Zosimos of Panopolis, Metal-
lurgists (Roman Egypt)

Alchemical literature emerged in the first centuries of the common
era; it consists mainly of metallurgical recipes (though some refer to
jewels and dyeing), with philosophical and religious commentary woven
into many of the texts.1 The prevailing explanation of alchemy’s origins

* I would like to thank editor Marquis Berrey and the two anonymous peer reviewers for
their thoughtful, helpful feedback, and Sara L. Hales-Brittain for her editorial acumen.
Special thanks to editorial assistant Edward Keogh for inviting me to submit, and to
Rubedo Press for permission to reproduce passages from Becoming Gold (Grimes 2018).

1 Copies of alchemical writings dating from the first through eighth centuries were
preserved in several medieval anthologies, collectively known as the Greco-Egyptian
alchemical corpus. The texts being discussed here date from the Roman period
(first–fourth centuries CE), and come from Greek and Syriac manuscripts. The Greek
manuscripts are Marcianus graecus 299 (tenth or eleventh century), Parisini graeci 2325
(thirteenth century) and 2327 (fifteenth century), and Laurentianus graecus 86, 16
(fifteenth century); the Syriac manuscripts are Mm 6.29 (fifteenth century), Egerton
709 (fifteenth century) and Oriental 1593 (fifteenth or sixteenth century). For a more

68 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 29 (2018)

is that Egyptian metallurgists began applying Greek philosophy to
their work and developing theories of how to transmute base metals
into precious ones.2 Although I challenged this conceptualization of
transmutation (i.e., turning base metals into gold) in my earlier work
on alchemy (Grimes 2006), I never questioned the idea that Greek
philosophy was a defining feature of alchemy, but I have since come to
view it as problematic because it reinforces Western biases toward sci-
ence and rationalism and tends to obscure the Egyptian contributions.3
My research focuses on the most prolific of the Roman-era Egyptian
alchemists, Zosimos of Panopolis (late third-early fourth century CE),
who was a temple scribe and artisan-priest that made statues and other
metal goods.4 I have recently argued that ancient Egyptian theology
and rituals of statue-making are essential to understanding not only
Zosimos’ work, but the origins of Greco-Egyptian alchemy, which is
rooted in these ancient temple traditions (Grimes 2018).

complete list and description of the manuscripts in the Greco-Egyptian alchemical
corpus, including Latin and Arabic works, see Mertens (2002 xii–cxii). For a detailed
discussion of the Syriac works, see Martelli (2014).

2 Since the late nineteenth century, when Berthelot first published his translated
compilations of Greco-Egyptian alchemical literature, historians of alchemy have
insisted that what makes a text alchemical is that it contains theoretical reflection
on the physical changes observed in their work. Greek philosophical theories
are usually privileged over religious and “magical” ideas that appear in some of
these works. The oldest “alchemical” manuscripts are P. Leiden X and P. Graecus
Holmiensis, known as the Leiden and Stockholm papyri, which were discovered in
Thebes in Upper Egypt and date to the late third to early fourth centuries CE, but
there has long been debate over whether these can be considered alchemical since
they are recipes without any theoretical reflection. However, the recipes overlap
with texts that are widely regarded as alchemical, such as the Φυσικὰ καὶ Μυστικά
of Ps-Democritus (first–third c. CE). See Halleux 5–14, 24–30; Caley and Jensen
3–4.

3 On this point, see also Moyer, who argues that in scholarship of Hellenistic
Egypt, Egypt and Egyptians have taken a backseat to Hellenism, that they have
been overlooked as historical subjects, and instead treated as “absent objects of
representation” (1–2). He also notes the implicit bias in favor of the “rational”
Greeks, as opposed to the “primitive” Egyptians (3).

4 On dates for Zosimos, see Mertens’s introduction, Auth.Mem., xv–xvi.

GRIMES: SECRETS OF THE GOD MAKERS 69

The purpose of this article is to propose a different explanation
for the appearance of alchemical literature in the Roman period, one
that raises the profile of the Egyptian contributions to the develop-
ment of alchemy, decentralizes the emphasis on Hellenistic theory, and
suggests that the answer might be found in socio-economic causes.
What is new in the Roman period is not that Egyptian artisans were
turning to Greek philosophy, which they had been engaging with for
centuries, but the rise of trade guilds in this era, which disrupted tra-
ditional temple economies and created new networks for the exchange
of materials, ideas, and techniques. In order to bring the metallurgical
arts in Roman Egypt into sharper focus, I will draw heavily, though
not exclusively, on Zosimos’ work. As Baines has noted, very little is
known about Egyptian artists, and it is rare to find their perspectives
in writing (73, 89). This is true in Greco-Egyptian alchemical texts
as well. Zosimos, therefore, is a valuable source for anyone studying
metallurgy or artisans in Roman Egypt, since he includes more personal
narrative and insight into his profession than any other alchemical
author of that period.
Though this article summarizes some of my recent work on Zosi-
mos, the argument I am making here is new. I begin with a discussion
of some distinctive features of ancient Egyptian metallurgical arts,
which appear in many of the recipes in the Greco-Egyptian alchemi-
cal corpus, in order to demonstrate that alchemy is rooted in this
tradition. Next, I examine the work of the temple artisans and scribal
priests in order to determine where they fit into the priestly hierarchy,
to highlight their work as scribes, and to show how Egyptian ideas are
foundational to alchemical theory, which helps to dislodge the idea
that alchemy is based on Greek philosophy. In the last section I give
a brief outline of the rise of trade guilds in Roman Egypt and their
connection to the temples. I also outline the economic hierarchies of
different types of trade guilds, namely gold-, silver-, and bronze-smiths,
because certain classes of metallurgists had more access to precious
metals and to temple contracts than others. I conclude with a discus-
sion of Zosimos’ comments about trade secrecy, which indicate that
temple traditions of secrecy were breaking down, in order to make my
overall point: that the emergence of alchemical texts in Roman Egypt
is most likely due to shifting socio-economic relationships caused by
the rise of trade guilds at that time.

70 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 29 (2018)

ALCHEMY AND TEMPLE STATUE-MAKING

Although alchemy is often imagined and sometimes defined as the
effort to transmute base metals into gold, there is no strong evidence for
this in the Greco-Egyptian alchemical corpus.5 Hopkins first pointed out
in 1918 that alchemical ideas of transmutation are essentially describ-
ing changes in color, and not transmutations of one metal into another,
but his color theory never gained much traction (531–33).6 These
ideas are worth revisiting, however, because new evidence has shown
that polychromatic techniques were more commonly used by Egyptian
artisans than had previously been thought.7 As art historian Delange
explains, polychromy is a distinctive feature of Egyptian metal statuary
in particular, but until recently, scholars had been unable to detect the
polychromy because of the natural patinas and corrosion that color met-
als over time; however, newer developments in microscopy and X-ray
analysis have made it possible to identify the subtle, intentional uses
of color by the artists (39). These coloration techniques were perfected
by temple artisans in the Third Intermediate Period (1070–664 BCE),
about a thousand years before Zosimos’ time, but the production of
polychrome statuary persisted into the Ptolemaic and Roman periods,
and artifacts from this era show that a single statue might be made of
several different metals and contain a variety of hues, achieved through
bronzing and surface treatments, gilding, or inlays (Schorsch 196).
Zosimos makes explicit reference to statue-making in a text called On
the Work of Copper, where he gives several recipes for making tinctures
used in coloring metals, imparting hues of purple, red, coral-pink, yellow,
black, white, blue, gold, and silver to the statues (CMA II.6, 222ff.).8 He
takes pride in his work, claiming that the coloration is so vivid and the

5 See Grimes (2006 ch. 1), and Dufault.

6 See Hopkins (1925) for a later elaboration of his color theory. Scholars are
beginning to return to this idea. On color being the most important quality of
minerals for ancient Egyptians, see Beretta 16.

7 For a technical description of some initial studies, see LaNiece et al.

8 Ancient texts in the CMA are in Syriac and Arabic, translated into French by
Duval. All references to CMA in this paper are from the Syriac collection, and I rely
on Duval’s French translation unless otherwise noted.

GRIMES: SECRETS OF THE GOD MAKERS 71

form so perfect that when people see the statues, they are frightened and
believe they are living beings.9 He mentions statues of Agathodaemon,
Fortune, Mother Earth, and the god of the Nile, all of which were popu-
lar deities in the Roman period, as well as figurines likely used as votive
offerings, including male and female figures, animals, birds, trees, and
ears (so the gods will hear one’s prayers).10 In addition to polychromy,
the Greco-Egyptian alchemical corpus contains many recipes for making
metallic inks and for blackening metals, both of which are distinctive
features of Egyptian statuary.11 One of the unattributed books in the
Syriac alchemical manuscripts, Letter Beta, attests to this practice and
gives several recipes for “writing” with precious metals, many in the
form of encaustic inlays using liquid adhesives, gum arabic, or fish glue:
“With this, you can write letters of gold on vases <…>, on statues, and
on all that you wish, so as to make it look like golden letters.”12 Some
statues are elaborately “tattooed” with
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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/2451859X-00701004

Gnosis 7 (2022) 70–80

brill.com/gnos

Defining Greco-Egyptian Alchemy
Shannon Grimes | orcid: 0000-0001-7764-8647
Meredith College, Raleigh, NC, USA
GrimesSh@meredith.edu

Abstract

This paper was originally written for a conference panel responding to Radcliffe
Edmonds’s survey of Greco-Romanmagic, Drawing Down theMoon. I discuss his chap-
ter on alchemy in light of two new books on Greco-Egyptian alchemy that were pub-
lished while his manuscript was in press: my own work, Becoming Gold and Olivier
Dufault’s EarlyGreekAlchemy,Patronageand Innovation inLateAntiquity. I explainwhy
new definitions of Greco-Egyptian alchemy are needed and provide one at the end.

Keywords

alchemy – Greco-Egyptian alchemy – Zosimos of Panopolis – magic –
Greco-Roman magic

1 Defining Greco-Egyptian Alchemy

Radcliffe Edmonds’s new survey of Greco-Roman magic, Drawing Down the
Moon, is an excellent book to think with. I am particularly impressed by his
thoughtful definitions and typologies of magical practices. Here I will focus
on his chapter on alchemy, discussing it in light of two monographs on Greco-
Egyptian alchemy that were publishedwhile Edmonds’s bookwas still in press:
myownbook, BecomingGoldwhich is a cultural biography of the late third cen-
tury alchemist, Zosimos of Panopolis; along with Olivier Dufault’s Early Greek
Alchemy, Patronage and Innovation, which looks at the role of patron/client
relationships in the development of alchemy.1 These newer works explore the

1 Grimes 2018; Dufault 2019.

commentary articles on radcliffe g. edmonds iii 71

Gnosis 7 (2022) 70–80

socio-economic and professional contexts of Greco-Egyptian alchemy more
than any studies have to date, so I would like to bring them into conversation
with Edmonds’s survey to show how understandings of alchemy are shifting,
and where new definitions might be needed.

2 What Is Greco-Egyptian Alchemy?

To get us acquainted with Greco-Egyptian alchemy, I will start with Edmonds’s
definition:

Alchemy in the ancient Greco-Roman world may be defined as the art
or craft of the transmutation of the qualities of matter. Such a definition
hinges on the theoretical aspect, stressing the importance of considering
qualities as transferrable in the abstract, but it encompasses a range prac-
tices, from procedures to change the color of metals to rituals to purify
and perfect the soul.2

He goes on to explain that since these activities can also be practiced without
a focus on the transmutation of qualities of matter, it is the theoretical aspect
which designates something as alchemical or not. I like that Edmonds’s defini-
tion is broad enough to encompass the technical, philosophical, and religious
aspects of these texts. It is also open-ended enough that it couldwork formuch
of the history of alchemy in different cultures and time periods. Yet there are
problems with the emphasis on theory and the open-endedness of his defini-
tion that need to be examined more closely.

The emphasis on theory is not unique to Edmonds. This is the prevailing
view in alchemical scholarship, which has been recapitulated in some form or
another for over a century.3 The standard explanation is that alchemy origi-

2 Edmonds 2019, 270.
3 Since Marcellin Berthelot first published his translated compilations of Greco-Egyptian

alchemical literature in the late nineteenth century, historians of alchemy have insisted that
whatmakes a text alchemical is that it contains theoretical reflection. The oldest “alchemical”
manuscripts are P. Leiden X and P. Graecus Holmiensis, known as the Leiden and Stockholm
papyri, which were discovered in Thebes in Upper Egypt and date to the late third to early
fourth centuries ce, but there has long been debate over whether these can be considered
alchemical since they are recipes without any theoretical reflection. However, the recipes
overlap with texts that are widely regarded as alchemical, such as the Φυσικὰ καὶ Μυστικὰ
(Natural and Secret Things) of Ps-Democritus (first–third c. ce). See Halleux 1981, 5–14, 24–
30; and Caley and Jensen 2008, 3–4.

72 commentary articles on radcliffe g. edmonds iii

Gnosis 7 (2022) 70–80

natedwhen Egyptian artisans began applying Greek nature philosophy to their
work and theorizing about the transmutation of metals. This theoretical turn,
then, differentiated alchemy from the craft knowledge that came before it, and
therefore alchemy can be seen as a prototype of modern chemistry. However,
in giving alchemy a Western philosophical pedigree, the Egyptian artistic and
religious traditions that birthed it have largely been ignored.4

It is not that it is misguided to focus on Greek philosophy – it is even justifi-
able, given thatmanyalchemical texts do incorporate it.5 Edmonds’s discussion
of the philosophical aspects of this art is excellent and thorough, showing how
alchemy draws from pre-Socratic speculations about the arche, or first prin-
ciples of the universe; Empedocles’s theory of the four elements; Aristotle’s
theory of exhalations within solid materials; and the demiurgical imagery and
cosmogonic theories of matter in Plato’s Timaeus.6 He writes beautifully about
the transmutation of elements and their qualities, such as heat, color, and
light. Since Greco-Egyptian alchemists were coloring metals, and not attempt-
ing to change base metals into gold (which was a goal of later alchemists),
Edmonds’s specific wording about transmutation of the qualities of matter is
an improvement over previous definitions because it is more accurate and
nuanced. However, Edmonds, like scholars before him, does not have much to
say about the artistic traditions behind alchemy, other than they can be traced
to Mesopotamia and Egypt, and that in the Hellenistic period these “techni-
cal traditions” (note the absence of theory!) were systematized into “arcane
lore” and shifted into the realm of legend andmagic.7 This privileging of Greek
philosophy not only minimizes the religious and philosophical traditions that
came before, it perpetuates a Western bias toward Greek philosophy as the
foundation of rational thought, which has helped make alchemy, as the ances-
tor of chemistry, more palatable. I am not arguing that Edmonds shares these
views. His chapter is an overview of Greco-Egyptian alchemy, and he is accu-

4 I am in agreement with Ian Moyer, who argues that in the scholarship of Hellenistic Egypt,
Egypt and Egyptians have taken a backseat to Hellenism; they have been overlooked as his-
torical subjects, and instead treated as “absent objects of representation.” He also notes the
implicit bias in favor of the “rational” Greeks, as opposed to the “primitive” Egyptians. See
Moyer 2011, 1–3.

5 Although Greco-Egyptian alchemists sometimes explain chemical workings in light of Greek
philosophy, they do not do so systematically. It is not until the Byzantine period of alchemy
(fifth to seventh centuries) that Neoplatonic commentatorsmake extensive use of Greek phi-
losophy in an attempt to clarify and theoretically systematize earlier Greco-Egyptian alchem-
ical texts. See Viano 2018.

6 Edmonds 2019, 276–283.
7 Edmonds 2019, 270–271.

commentary articles on radcliffe g. edmonds iii 73

Gnosis 7 (2022) 70–80

rately reproducing much of the scholarship of this field. But the emphasis on
Greek philosophy is problematic for many reasons, and has been a barrier to
understanding the origins and development of alchemy.

Another problem with using theory as a linchpin for alchemy is that there
are alchemical recipes with no theoretical speculation on the transmutation
of matter whatsoever. Two well-known collections, the Leiden and Stockholm
papyri, fall into this category, and there has long been debate over whether
these should even be classified as alchemical texts due to their lack of the-
ory.8 Rather than continue to reinforce a divide between theory and practice,
I think we need to look more closely at the common denominator of all the
Greco-Egyptian alchemical texts, which is that they are all rooted in decorative
metallurgical arts. The majority of the recipes from the Greco-Roman period
are for coloring metals; others are for coloring gems, and for making dyes and
metallic inks. A few of the Syriac translations mention that they were using
these colored metals to make statues, vases, amulets, and other decorative
objects.9 Egyptians were famous in antiquity for their coloredmetals, butmod-
ern researchers had been unable to see much of the polychromy on surviving
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