To fully integrate the three main research lines of the project, we have assembled a highly interdisciplinary research group comprising scholars with diverse yet complementary skills. Assyriologists, experts in Greek, Syriac or Arabic texts, historians of science, and chemists have been working side by side. This cross-disciplinary work has been discussed in international meetings (conferences, workshops, panels) organized throughout the project's duration. Some of these meetings focused on primary sources and their cultural contexts. They explored topics such as the dissemination of technical papyri in Graeco-Roman Egypt, the distinctive features of Greek, Syriac, and Arabic alchemical manuscripts as well as Babylonian procedural texts. Other workshops examined specific areas of expertise related to ancient alchemical knowledge, including ink making, perfume making, music, botany, and ancient painting. A series of lectures was devoted to the epistemologies of ancient recipes. The main results of these activities have been published in monographic studies on the history of ancient chemical arts as well as in edited volumes.
A wide and multilingual corpus of textual sources has been investigated. This extensive corpus of primary sources includes:
(1) Babylonian proto-chemical recipes. This investigation mainly focused on Akkadian tablets on glass making, perfume making, metalworking, and textile dyeing. For a general introduction to the Babylonian 'chemical' corpus, with a link to the digital editions and translations of key sources, please refer to:
https://alchemeast.eu/cuneiform-texts/(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)(2) Graeco-Egyptian alchemical writings. The research mainly focused on the earliest alchemical books that came to us, namely the Leiden and Stockholm papyri, whose structure and sources have been freshly examined, and the writings by Zosimus of Panopolis. Furthermore, we investigated the impact of (al)chemical techniques in Middle Platonic philosophical discourse.
(3) Byzantine alchemical writings. Along with a new catalogue of the Byzantine alchemical manuscripts kept in Italian libraries, the project has produced a new edition and translation of the alchemical writings attributed to Christianos as well as of the late alchemical dialogues attributed to the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.
(4) Syriac and Arabic alchemical texts. A throughout study of the Syriac translation of Zosimus’ alchemical writings has been combined with the study of : (a) Arabic alchemical works attributed to Maria the Jewess, Democritus and Ostanes (edition and translation); (b) Pseudo al-Rāzī’s ‘Book on alums and salts’ in its Arabic and Hebrew versions (edition and translation); (c) Jābir ibn Ḥayyān’s books on the seven metals and the fifth nature (monographic study) and Jābir’s ‘Rectifications to Plato’ (study of the manuscript tradition).
A continuous experimental work in modern laboratories has integrated and complemented the textual work, which has allowed us to trace and map the transmission and transformation of alchemical procedures over centuries. The replications of alchemical recipes have been based on this diachronic reconstruction of the selected procedures. The laboratory work has mainly focused on the ancient chemistry of mercury (cold and hot extraction from cinnabar; making of artificial cinnabar), the ink production (the making of golden inks and inviable inks), and the technology of ‘divine waters’.
