The searched-for thing: a literary approach to four early alchemical texts
Keywords: alchemy
Enoch
Greco-Egyptian magic
Late antique Egypt
Hermetica
Zosimus of Panopolis
Secret Book of John
Letter from Isis to Horus
Dialogue of the Philosophers and Cleopatra
Ostanes

A lot of classical scholarship has perceived early Greco-Egyptian alchemy as a combination of Egyptian metallurgy and Greek philosophy coated with what André-Jean Festugière has called “mystical reveries”. More recent scholarship has challenged this perception by drawing attention to the fact that ancient alchemy had a broader set of concerns (such as various dyeing techniques unrestricted to metals) and influences (such as magic and various spiritual traditions). The present thesis aligns with the latter view by introducing a literary dimension to such concerns. I argue that some early alchemical compositions display literary ambitions that have been overlooked and downplayed (as implied in Festugière’s phrase) in previous scholarship. Experimentation does not seem restricted to technical operations: these writings are themselves experiments that result in elaborate and inventive compositions. I investigate in detail what this shift to a literary interpretation entails for four early alchemical works, namely the Letter from Isis to Horus (Chapter I), the Dialogue of the Philosophers and Cleopatra (Chapter II), On the Letter Omega by Zosimus of Panopolis (Chapter III), and Memoirs 10-12 by the same author (Chapter IV). Each chapter starts with a brief introduction to the work’s dating, transmission, and contents, followed by an analysis of how each writing in question approaches conventional textual forms in both expected and unexpected ways. I then proceed to a close reading of each composition, when the reader is given the chance to relish each writing’s peculiarity and language as it unfolds. Finally, contextual parallels are drawn in order to enrich interpretation. The first chapter demonstrates how the Letter from Isis to Horus incorporates motifs found in Hermetism, Greco-Egyptian magic, and Jewish magic and scripture (1 Enoch) in a way of its own. The second chapter looks into how the Dialogue of the Philosophers and Cleopatra creates a peculiar scene of knowledge transmission by narrating an encounter between the Egyptian ruler Cleopatra and the Persian magus Ostanes that lies between a philosophical dialogue and a Christian sermon. The third chapter investigates how Zosimus’ On the Letter Omega tries to harmonise various doctrines explicitly attributed to different cultural backgrounds, revealing the highly eclectic milieu of late antique Egypt already suggested by the works analysed in the first two chapters. The fourth chapter examines Zosimus’ eclectic and inventive writing style displayed in his dream narratives, which stylise a number of motifs found in scripture, Hermetism, and other traditions of revealed knowledge with surreal, disorienting prose. By mixing these various elements together with a language of secrecy and intellectual inquiry, I argue, these works become strange yet intriguing compositions that compel the reader to partake in the search for alchemical knowledge each of them prompts in different yet related ways.