Chemistry (etymology) - Overview

Overview

The first documents written in ancient Greek date from around 800 B.C. more than 1,000 years after literary Egyptian; so Greek alchemists may have adopted Egyptian terminology. Other possible sources include the Old Persian word "Kimiya" meaning gold. The alchemical theories associated with Hermes Trismegistus, is the syncretism of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian Thoth. Moreover, it is known that "he four chemical gods of the Egyptians, the female-male original principle of Osiris (male Sun) and the corresponding Isis (Wife-sister, female Moon), as well as Mercury and Vulcan, became eight gods and finally twelve gods, who were later taken over by the Greeks." This origin theory, in chemistry, was generally known as the "pyramid of composition" and was utilized in the writing of Michael Maier, who in turn influenced Isaac Newton in his alchemical writings in the 1680s. Hence, the ancient "Egypt" word kēme (3000 B. C.), which stands for earth, is a possible root word of chemistry; this later became "khēmia", or transmutation, by 300 AD, and then “al-khemia” in the Arabic world, then alchemia in the Dark Ages, then “chymistry” in 1661 with Boyle’s publication, and now “chemistry”.

In Alexandria alchemy began to flourish in the Hellenistic period; simultaneously, a school of alchemy was developing in China. The writings of some of the early Greek philosophers might be considered to contain the first chemical theories; and the theory advanced in the 5th century B. C. by Empedocles — that all things are composed of air, earth, fire, and water — was influential in alchemy.

J. R. Partington in his four-volume work History of Chemistry (1969) says that “the earliest applications of chemical processes were concerned with the extraction and working of metals and the manufacture of pottery, which were forms of crafts practiced many centuries before the Bronze Age cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia.” Thus, according to Partington, alchemy preceded Egypt and Mesopotamia.

There are two main views on the derivation of the word, which agree in holding that it has an Arabic descent, the prefix al being the Arabic article. But according to one, the second part of the word comes from the Greek χημεία, pouring, infusion, used in connexion with the study of the juices of plants, and thence extended to chemical manipulations in general; this derivation accounts for the old-fashioned spellings "chymist" and "chymistry". The other view traces it to khem or khame, hieroglyph khmi, which denotes black earth as opposed to barren sand, and occurs in Plutarch as χημεία; on this derivation alchemy is explained as meaning the "Egyptian art". The first occurrence of the word is said to be in a treatise of Julius Firmicus, an astrological writer of the 4th century, but the prefix al there must be the addition of a later copyist. In English, Piers Plowman (1362) contains the phrase "experimentis of alconomye", with variants "alkenemye" and " alknamye". The prefix al began to be dropped about the middle of the 16th century (further details of which are given below).