Publisher's Synopsis
Chemistry, as an art, was practised thousands of years before the Christian era; as a science, it dates no further back than the middle of the seventeenth century. The monumental records of Egypt and the accounts left us by Herodotus and other writers show that the ancient Egyptians, among the earliest nations of whom we have any records, had a considerable knowledge of processes essentially chemical in their nature. Their priests were adepts in certain chemical arts, and chemical laboratories were occasionally attached to their temples, as at Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis. It is to be supposed, too, that in a cultured class, as the priesthood undoubtedly was, there would be now and again curious and ingenious persons who would speculate on the nature and causes of the phenomena which they observed. But there is no certain evidence that the Egyptians ever pursued chemistry in the spirit of science, or even in the manner in which they and the Chaldaeans followed, for example, astronomy or mathematics. The operations of chemistry as performed by them were of the nature of manufacturing processes, empirical in character and utilitarian in result. It was comparatively late in the world's history that men were found willing to occupy themselves in chemical pursuits in order to gain an insight into the nature of chemical change, and to learn the causes and conditions of its action. Although we have cited the ancient Egyptians as practising the chemical arts, there is no proof that these arts actually originated with them. China, India, Chaldaea have each in turn been regarded as the birthplace of the various technical processes from which chemistry may be said to have taken its rise. Nevertheless, it is mainly from Egyptian records, or from writings avowedly based on information from Egyptian sources, that such knowledge as we possess of the earliest chemical processes is derived. It is significant that the word "chemistry" has its origin in chemi, "the black land," the ancient name for Egypt. The art itself was constantly spoken of as the "Egyptian art." The first author in whom the word is found is Plutarch, who lived under the Emperors Domitian, Nerva, and Trajan. That philosopher, in his treatise of Isis and Osiris, takes occasion to observe that Egypt, in the sacred dialect of the country, was called by the same name as the black of the eye-viz., ia-by which he seems to intimate that the word chemia in the Egyptian language signified black, and that the country, Egypt, might take its denomination from the blackness of the soil. But [continues Boerhaave] the etymology and grammatical signification of the name is not so easily dispatched. The critics and antiquaries, among whom it has been a great subject of inquiry, will not let it pass without some further disquisition. Instead of black, some will have it originally denote secret, or occult; and hence derive it from the Hebrew chaman, or haman-a mystery, whose radix is cham. And, accordingly, Plutarch observes that Egypt, in the same sacred dialect, is sometimes wrote in Greek ?aia-chamia; whence the word is easily deduced further from Cham, eldest son of Noah, by whom Egypt was first peopled after the deluge, and from whom, in the Scripture style, it is called the land of Cham, or Chem. Now, that chaman, or haman, properly signifies secret appears from the same Plutarch, who, mentioning an ancient author named Menethes Sibonita, who had asserted that Ammon and Hammon were used to denote the god of Egypt, Plutarch takes this occasion to observe that in the Egyptian language anything secret or occult was called by the same name, ? -Hammon.... Lastly, the learned Bochart, keeping to the same sense of the word, chooses to derive it from the Arabic chema, or kema-to hide; adding that there is an Arabic book of secrets called by the same name Kemi.
