The origin of alchemy is ancient even when traced back no further than the second or third century of our era. But the adepts and historians of the art were by no means thus easily satisfied, and sought to invest it with the imposing dignity of a hoary antiquity. Some of them were very bold and claimed Adam as its founder, with the naive desire of making it as old as the race. The loss of the secret came with the loss of Paradise. Olaeus Borrichius is on somewhat firmer ground when he fixes on Tubal-cain, the famous smith of the Bible, for it is certain that the metallurgy of primitive times provided the practical basis of alchemy. Noah was enlisted among these patriarchal adepts. It was argued that he must have possessed the Elixir of life, otherwise he could not have begotten children when he was five hundred years old. The contention, however, is not quite convincing.
A supposition of a very different and far sounder kind is advanced when the word "alchemy" is derived from the name Shem, or Chem, the son of Noah. But even were the name Chem proved to be in evidence, we should not on this score conclude, with a seventeenth-century History of the Hermetic Philosophy, that Shem was an alchemist!
Once started on this track, historians could not fail to enrol Moses. Was he not learned in all the lore of the Egyptians, and would not alchemy be included? Moreover, it is recorded that when Moses was angered at the idolatry of the Israelites, "he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it." Here, they triumphantly infer, is proof positive that he had the Philosopher's Stone. For how, save by its agency, could he have made the gold powder float on the water? And if it be objected that there is no trace of knowledge of the Stone in the subsequent narratives, the answer is ready. Moses kept the knowledge to himself, and would never entrust the secret to his people.
Solomon was even more certain to be claimed as an adept. For he was widely held to be a master of occult and magical arts, and was possessed of enormous stores of gold. Clearly he knew the mysteries of transmutation. Yes, said early higher critics, he had gold; but if he could make it, why did he go to so much trouble and expense to send to Orphir? This obvious objection was parried by the supposition that, determining to keep the secret, he had the metal carried there and brought back again, in order to mislead the people as to its real source!
Hermes Trismegistus.
Of much greater significance is the claim that the art was founded by Hermes Trismegistus—the Thrice-greatest Hermes. He was an Egyptian priest, supposed to have lived about 2000 B.C., widely revered as the inventor of all the useful arts, and, on that account, in course of time elevated to the rank of the gods. So closely was his name connected with alchemy that "the Hermetic Art" came to be a synonym for it. His mystical hymn was often recited and quoted by the adepts, as an authoritative statement of one of their earliest and most characteristic doctrines—that of the unity of all that exists. "Universe, be attentive to my voice; earth, open; let the mass of waters open to me; trees, tremble not. I would praise the Supreme Lord, the All and the One. Let the heavens open and the winds be still; let all my faculties praise the All and the One." The bearing of this on our subject will be considered when we treat of the philosophy of alchemy.
The significance of the prominent place given to Hermes lies here. It was undoubtedly the metallurgical and chemical knowledge and skill possessed by the Egyptians that started the idea of the practical possibility of transmutation. From the earliest times that pioneer civilisation worked with metals and alloys, with the making of glass and enamel, and with the concoction of medicines. And Berthelot has shown that it is the material thus accumulated which is embodied in the oldest treatises on alchemy, If, then, we take Hermes Trismegistus to be the representative of a whole succession of Egyptian priest-metallurgists, instead of a single individual discoverer, the claim on his behalf may be accorded a large measure of validity.
We must be careful, however, not to press the claim too far. For this core of historical fact was overlaid by enormous accretions of myth and fantastic legend. Nor can we wonder that this should have happened. For during the whole of our Christian era there has been a widely spread conviction (not yet extinct!) that the ancient Egyptians had discovered many secret arts, occult doctrines, and magical formulae which had been lost to the world. The veil that hung over the ruined retreats at Thebes and Memphis, the ignorance of what was known and practised there, allowed free play for imagination and cast a glamour over the little that had survived. Mediaeval sages (and not a few moderns) firmly believed that the bizarre signs and emblems of that almost obliterated past concealed secrets and revelations of the deepest import. Hence exaggerations and absurdities. The fact nevertheless remains that this ancient metallurgy gave a starting-point for alchemy properly so called.
At last, then, we approach the confines of history. We have discovered the existence in Egypt of a large accumulation of the kind of materials with which alchemy concerned itself. Jewellers, painters, potters, glass-makers, and pre-eminently metal-workers—each craft had its own store of technical secrets handed on generation after generation by personal instruction as between masters and apprentices. Doubtless there were also manuals and treatises; but these have not been preserved, and in any case played a quite subsidiary part. Berthelot lays great emphasis on the importance of such professional tradition. He contends that the Egyptian lore was in this way transmitted to the artisans of Rome, preserved during the Dark Ages in the workshops of Italy and France, and gradually absorbed into the general body of alchemical doctrine and practice.
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