were
rather in the nature of reminders for skilled workers rather than
detailed descriptions for purposes of general information. This fact
emphasizes the likelihood that this papyrus was a kind of a laboratory
note-book of the operations of the chemical arts of the times.
The
recipes dealing with metals and alloys are certainly the most numerous.
These may be conveniently grouped as follows: The making of alloys,
coloring the surfaces of metals, cleaning and purifying metals, and
testing metals for purity.
The
first of these, the manufacture of alloys, is the subject of the
majority of the recipes. And, in nearly all cases the alloy being made
is the same one namely, "asem." The word itself referred either to
silver, alloys of silver and gold, or in fact to any alloy used in
jewelry resembling these. As a matter of fact, the whole viewpoint of
the ancients regarding substances was so entirely different from ours
that we sometimes forget that they generally failed to distinguish
metals, chemically, from each other very clearly and went wholly upon
appearances. For example, if two alloys had the same appearance
although differing in composition they considered them identical. This
is checked further in other cases, notably among the Romans, who
applied the same name "aes" to all kinds of copper alloys regardless of
composition. In the papyrus most of the recipes are simply
straightforward working directions, although in one or two cases there
is direct evidence of an intention to deceive. Thus in No. 8 we read,
"this will be asem of the first quality, which will deceive even the
artisans," showing that there was some recognition of chemical
differences aside from qualitative appearances. Perhaps the workers of
the recipes knew this, but it is certain that this knowledge was not
general, as the philosophy of the ancients so well informs us. It is
these practical recipes and working directions for making alloys from
various metals that later became fused with various mystical and
philosophical doctrines and so grew into alchemy. Hence, the papyrus is
of the highest historical importance chemically in showing the real
starting point of the alchemical ideas of the transmutation of metals.
As
to the practical composition of the alloys themselves, they are seen to
vary from simple two-metal combinations to those containing four or
five metals. The metals used were gold, silver, tin, copper, lead,
mercury, arsenic, antimony, and zinc, the latter ones being used in the
form of their compounds and not being distinguished in the metallic
state. A curious fact to be noted in the making of these alloys is that
in nearly all cases where compounds are employed there is no mention of
a reducing agent being employed. Perhaps the furnaces used were
operated under reducing conditions or it was understood by the workers
that charcoal or wood was to be placed with the metals being fused. The
limited range in the type of alloys whose manufacture is described
indicates that the owner
