Zosimus of Panopolis

Zosimos of Panopolis (Greek: Ζώσιμος; also known by the Latin name Zosimus Alchemista, i.e. "Zosimus the Alchemist") was a Greekalchemist and Gnostic mystic who lived at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century AD. He was born in Panopolis, present day Akhmim in the south of Egypt, and flourished ca. 300. He wrote the oldest known books on alchemy, which he called "Cheirokmeta," using the Greek word for "things made by hand." Pieces of this work survive in the original Greek language and in translations into Syriac or Arabic. He is one of about 40 authors represented in a compendium of alchemical writings that was probably put together in Constantinople in the 7th or 8th century AD and that exists in manuscripts in Venice and Paris. Stephen of Alexandria is another.

Arabic translations of texts by Zosimos were discovered in 1995 in a copy of the book Keys of Mercy and Secrets of Wisdom by Ibn Al-Hassan Ibn Ali Al-Tughra'i', a Persian alchemist. Unfortunately, the translations were incomplete and seemingly non-verbatim. The famous index of Arabic books, Kitab al-Fihrist by Ibn Al-Nadim, mentions earlier translations of four books by Zosimos, however due to inconsistency in transliteration, these texts were attributed to names "Thosimos", "Dosimos" and "Rimos"; also it is possible that two of them are translations of the same book. F. Sezgin has found 15 manuscripts of Zozimos in six libraries, at Tehran, Caire, Istanbul, Gotha, Dublin and Rampur. Michèle Mertens analyzes what is known about those manuscripts in her translation of Zozimos, concluding that the Arabic tradition seems extremely rich and promising, and regretting the difficulty of access to these materials, until translated editions are available.

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