Letters to the Editor
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Nassau, Gemstone Enhancement, 2nd ed., (Butterworth Heinemann, Boston, 1994)— was applied to a difficult text. It is now generally accepted that the To The Editor: author of the text (of which Leyden I. Amato presented in his Historical Papyrus X, and P Holm were later copies Note (MRS Bulletin, October 1995, p. 84) made about 300 AD) was a chemist by the an overview of two ancient Egyptian name of Bolos of the town of Mendes, papyri. Since I have done extended Egypt, writing about 200 BC under the research in this area, your readers may be title Baphika ("Dyeing"). Unlike most interested in some further details and other alchemical or magical recipes, those some minor corrections. My own work of Bolos deal in a very simple factual involved the Stockholm Papyrus (P manner with technical processes, some of Holm) and specifically the 75 recipes which are still in use today. Incidentally, relating to gemstones. the mystical two-sentence item which Amato described in his last paragraph is The English translation of Caley which not relevant since it was on a separate, Amato cited is in fact merely a secondary different-sized sheet, in a different handtranslation from the German one of O. Lagercrantz, Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis, writing, and probably of a later date. (A.B. Akademiska Bokhandeln, Uppsala, One area of particular interest to me Sweden, 1913). The only other translation were the 10 recipes involving pearls; two is the one in French of R. Halleux, Les of these, dealing with the cleaning of Alchimisters Grecs, vol. 1, (Societe D'edi- pearls via a chicken, were mentioned by tion "les Belles Lettres," Paris, 1981). Amato. To investigate their validity, I perThese translations were, however, performed experiments using both test tubes formed by classicists who were not fully and chickens (incidentally, the original text familiar with the technical aspects of the does not mention "cocks" but only the subject matter. Accordingly, I persuaded gender nonspecific term; it also does not Professor A.E. Hanson of the Classics say "immediately" but only "thereupon"). Department of Princeton University to The process of Recipe 25 does indeed work return to the original text and we found if the timing is right, but that of Recipe 60, many surprises when my knowledge of where the cleaned pearl was recovered the current and recent technology—see K. from the chicken excrement, does not
Translation of Original Stockholm Papyri Reveals Surprises
work (chickens use gizzard stones to grind up their food and do not void them, as confirmed experimentally with pearls). Details on all of this have been published in K. Nassau and A.E. Hanson, "The Pearl in the Chicken," Lapidary Journal 42 (3) 0une 1988) pp. 43-53. Research on early texts is fraught with traps for the unwary. Consider a citation from J. Bostock and H.T. Riley's famous Natural History of Pliny, vol. 6, (G. Bell, London, 1898) p. 407. Written in the first century AD, the Roman compiler says about diamond: "Adamas... is made to yield before the blood of a he-goat. The b
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