The Leyden and Stockholm Papyri - University of Cincinnati

THE LEYDEN & STOCKHOLM PAPYRI
Egyptian temples did maintain craftsmen in jewelry making, and
the Crown did attempt to control gold production to the point of
monopoly, but it is doubtful that such monopolies were consistently
maintained over long eras of Egyptian history. We know that votive
offerings and amulets in the form of jewelry were sold in booths in
the neighborhood of temples. Amulets were considered magical,
and it seems to have been the making of amulets rather than jewelry
making per se, which was secret work in which the priests
themselves may have been involved.
! Of course the above conclusion concerning the nature of the
Leyden and Stockholm papyri does not preclude the conjecture
that the earliest alchemists were almost certainly aware of many of
the same the recipes, which they then interpreted and elaborated
upon in pursuit of their own particular theoretical fantasies. Indeed,
one of the most suggestive counter-arguments to the conclusion
that these papyri are merely practical recipe books intended for
jewelers and craftsmen is based on that fact that 27 similar recipes
dealing with metal alloys and dyes are found in a work entitled
Physica et mystica, written by a 3rd century BC magician and alchemist
by the name of Bolos of Mendes, who wrote under the
pseudonym of Democritus, and who is obliquely referred to (via a
writer named Anaxilaus) in Recipe 2 of the Stockholm papyrus
dealing with the purification of copper. However, as pointed out by
Multhauf, the recipes in the Physica et mystica are (25):
... much less precise than those in the Leyden papyrus X, to a
degree which makes it uncertain that they are practical and not
merely literary prescriptions ... [Bolos] gives the reader a choice
of ingredients, many of which have resisted decipherment into the
terms of modern chemistry.
In addition, the Physica et mystica contains long digressions dealing
with magic and theory – in short all of the ingredients typical
of the alchemical literature but which are so pointedly missing
from the Stockholm and Leyden papyri.
! There are, in fact, tantalizing hints that the Physica et mystica
is related to an even older literary genre known as the “Baphika”
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