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| Victorian Alchemy |
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Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 06-10-2023, 06:37 PM - Forum: Reviews and book notices
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Misleading title, but interesting book by Eleanor Dobson.
'Victorian Alchemy explores nineteenth-century conceptions of ancient Egypt as this extant civilisation was being ‘rediscovered’ in the modern world. With its material remnants somewhat paradoxically symbolic of both antiquity and modernity (in the very currentness of Egyptological excavations), ancient Egypt was at once evocative of ancient magical power and of cutting-edge science, a tension that might be productively conceived of as ‘alchemical’. Allusions to ancient Egypt simultaneously lent an air of legitimacy to depictions of the supernatural while projecting a sense of enchantment onto representations of cutting-edge science.
Examining literature and other cultural forms including art, photography and early film, Eleanor Dobson traces the myriad ways in which magic and science were perceived as entwined, and ancient Egypt evoked in parallel with various fields of study, from imaging technologies and astronomy, to investigations into the electromagnetic spectrum and the human mind itself. In so doing, counter to linear narratives of nineteenth-century progress, and demonstrating how ancient Egypt was more than a mere setting for Orientalist fantasies or nightmares, the book establishes how conceptions of modernity were inextricably bound up in the contemporary reception of the ancient world, and suggests how such ideas that took root and flourished in the Victorian era persist to this day.'
Rights-free full-text download:
https://tinyurl.com/4ehny3s7
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| Fragments of Graeco-Egyptian Alchemy in Arabic Compendia |
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Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 06-10-2023, 06:22 PM - Forum: Articles on alchemy
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By Matteo Martelli.
From Ambix.
"Translation played a vital role in the development and transfer of alchemy in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Since its origins in Graeco-Roman
Egypt, alchemy was encapsulated in Greek texts which allegedly relied on Persian or Egyptian sources. Later, a variety of Greek and Byzantine writings
were translated into Syriac and Arabic, and these translations were in turn fragmented and disseminated in later Arabic compendia. This paper will first
review the main phases of this historical process of transmission of alchemy from one language and culture to another. Second, this process
will be examined using two significant case studies: a close analysis of various quotations from Graeco-Egyptian authors (Pseudo-Democritus,
Zosimus of Panopolis, and Synesius) as presented in two Arabic dialogues on alchemy, The Tome of Images and The Dialogue between Āras and the King
Caesar. These sources demonstrate some of the concrete textual realities that underlie general patterns of translation and reception."
https://tinyurl.com/y9r88dan
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