1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

5.7 Chemistry 141
specific characteristics is suggested by his mention of primitive men who
had a distinct bone structure and no language. 72
As we shall see, the early Hellenistic period witnessed the first direct
contributions from learned men to agricultural techniques. The study of
plants was also important to pharmacology, which became the main application
of botanics in the imperial age. The best source on this matter is
the De materia medica, compiled in the first century A.D. by the physician
Dioscorides. Down to the modern era it continued to be the best surviving
treatise on the medicinal properties of plants.
5.7 Chemistry
Chemical studies started in the Hellenistic period. Such early studies are
usually thought of as “alchemical”, but what is properly called alchemy —
a syncretism of Greek natural philosophy, Egyptian magic, allusions to
Judaism and Christianity, craftsmen’s recipes and empirical chemistry —
is first documented in the writings of Zosimus of Panopolis, from the early
fourth century of our era: 73 a time when all areas of Hellenistic science had
already been overrun by irrationalist currents.
Very little remains of early chemical works. One reason is hinted at by page 184
Zosimus himself, who insists on the arcane character of the knowledge
he is passing on. 74 He and his “alchemist” successors call theirs the sacred
art ( ) and refer explicitly to ancient Egyptian religious centers,
above all Memphis, as the birthplace of chemical lore. One imagines
that from its beginnings Egyptian chemistry was controlled by the priestly
class, 75 which as late as the Ptolemaic era was in charge of many economic
activities, carried out in temples. 76 Our attempts at reconstructing
Hellenistic empirical chemistry are thus thwarted by its confluence with
alchemy in later centuries, and we must be content with glimpses of it
caught through the alchemists who, deciding what to transmit and how
it would be combined with ingredients from other sources, filtered that
knowledge.
72 Lucretius, De rerum natura, V, 925–928, 1028–1032.
73 [Zosimus/Mertens] is a recent critical edition of this author’s Authentic memoirs, of which thirteen
fragments exist. For his other writings one must use [CAAG], dating from 1888 and unsatisfactory
in various respects.
74 Zosimus, Authentic memoirs, IV, 1, 30–34; VII, 2, 8–10; X, 7, 135–137 (ed. Mertens).
75 On the relationship between ancient “alchemical” knowledge and the Egyptian priesthood
(especially the Memphis sanctuary), see Mertens’ complementary note 9 in [Zosimus/Mertens],
pp. 187–189 and references therein.
76 See page 230.
Revision: 1.9 Date: 2002/09/14 19:12:01