Cleopatra (alchemist)

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Cleopatra the alchemist was a late antique alchemist from Egypt ( Alexandria ), known for her alchemical work Chrysopoeia ( Greek for gold making ). Their exact lifetime is unknown; it is classified from the 1st to the 3rd and 4th centuries. She is associated with the school of Mary the Jewess . The name is most likely a pseudonym .

Cleopatra the alchemist, illustration from Johann Daniel Mylius, Basilica philosophica 1618

Their text was used by alchemists until the late Middle Ages . Michael Maier counts her as one of the four women who mastered the production of the Philosopher's Stone (alongside Maria the Jewess, Medera, Taphnutia). It is also mentioned in the Arabic Kitab-al-Fihrist by Ibn an-Nadīm .

Her work Chrysopoeia is preserved in a manuscript from the 10th or 11th century in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice (Codex marcianus graecus 299). Another copy is in Leiden. In the book, mystical-philosophical and experimental elements of alchemy are mixed. There are pictures of alchemical devices, for example for distillation (such as forms of the alambic ) and descriptions of the production of elixirs. There is also the image of a snake biting its own tail ( Ouroboros ) as a symbol of one is all (hen to pan). The text is written as a dialogue. The manufacture of metals is compared to pregnancy and childbirth, and the relationship of the alchemist and philosopher to his work with that of a mother who nourishes her child.

Ouroboros from Chrysopeia

She is sometimes confused with Cleopatra the doctor mentioned by Hippocrates.

literature

  • Marianne Offereins, Renate Strohmeier: Cleopatra the Alchemist. In Jan Apotheker, Livia Simon Sarkadi (Ed.): European women in chemistry. Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 2011, ISBN 978-3-527-32956-4 .
  • Jack Lindsay: The origins of alchemy in greco-roman egypt. Muller, London 1970, ISBN 0-584-10005-1 .
  • Margaret Alic: Hypatias Heritage. A history of women in science from antiquity throught the late nineteenth century. Beacon Press, Boston 1986.
  • Renate Strohmeier: Lexicon of natural scientists and women of Europe. Harri Deutsch, Thun a. a. 1998, ISBN 3-8171-1567-9 .
  • Jette Anders : 33 alchemists. The hidden side of an ancient science. Past Publishing , Berlin 2016, ISBN 9783864082047 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Like these, she used the sun and cattle dung as an energy source in her laboratory.
  2. ↑ They were first published by Marcelin Berthelot , Introduction a la chimie des anciens et du moyen age, Steinheil 1889, pp. 132f. pictured.
personal data
SURNAME Cleopatra
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Egyptian alchemist
DATE OF BIRTH between 1st century and 4th century
DATE OF DEATH between 1st century and 4th century