The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

From four hundred BCE, until the time of Jesus, there was a
remarkable acceleration of learning in Alexandria under the Ptolemaic
kings of Egypt. 1358 This commenced with the break up of Alexander’s
empire in about 321BCE, when Alexandria became the enforced home of
a massive number of Palestine Jews. Ptolemy I Soter who reigned from
323BCE to 285BCE enslaved one hundred thousand Jews and brought
them to Alexandria where the men served as military conscripts. His son,
Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who reigned from 285BCE to 247BCE,
subsequently released all Jewish slaves. There were more than one
hundred and ten thousand at the time. Jews then resided all over the city
and a Jewish aristocracy became established on the elite east side of
Alexandria.
Ptolemy I Soter built the great Library of Alexandria. His son
Ptolemy II Philadelphus expanded it and ordered the translation of the
Torah into Greek for the benefit of the large Jewish population of
Alexandria who could no longer speak Hebrew. The result was the
Septuagint, finalized about 150BCE. Far from being jubilantly received,
many Jewish scholars lamented that the Septuagint divulged to Israel’s
enemies their innermost secrets and shame at the evil deeds done by their
ancestors and God’s continual punishments for backsliding. 1359
The Alexandria Library reputedly contained five hundred
thousand manuscripts and scholars could live there to study for as long as
they wished. Euclid was among the first scientists to work there. It was
at the Library that Aristarchos produced his remarkable treatise
suggesting the moon received its light from the sun. He also studied the
relative sizes and separations of the sun, moon and earth using a three
hundred and sixty degree system.
This era of enlightenment was not to last. Diocletian, Emperor of
Rome from 284CE to 305CE, was paranoid about Christianity and the
occult. He sought out and burned all Egyptian works that concerned the
chemistry of gold and silver. His reason for this was to prevent his
enemies making use of occult science against the Romans. 1360 In a last
effort to block Christianity, he declared Mithraism as the official religion
of the Roman Empire.
Diocletian may have been concerned about rumors of a fearful
alchemical secret, that of the legendary Shamir. In Rabbinical tradition,
the Shamir was a giant worm that could cut stones. 1361 The secret of the
Shamir was probably in the hands of the Essenes in Alexandria. We know
from Philo of Alexandria, who lived from 20BCE to 50CE, that the
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