Abstract
It is well-known — though not undisputed — that from the beginning Jews played a not insignificant role in the development of the ‘science’ of alchemy.1 It is much less well-known, however, that one of the earliest identifiable alchemist authors of whose work(s) fragments have been preserved, was a Jewish woman with the name of Maria.2 This long neglected author — the credit for whose rediscovery goes to the late Raphael Patai — is important in more than one respect. Firstly, Mary is the first non-fictitious alchemist of the Western world (most of the ‘ancient alchemists’ are mythical personalities, such as Ostanes, Hermes Trismegistus, and Pibechius);3 and secondly, she is the first Jewish woman in history we know to have written and published under her own name.4
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References
R. Patai, The Jewish Alchemists, Princeton1994; for a critical review see R. Fontaine in Revue d’histoire des sciences 49 (1996) 364f.
See R. Patai, ‘Maria the Jewess — Founding Mother of Alchemy’, Ambix 2.9 (2982) 177-197.
R. Halleux, ‘Alchemy’, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford 19963, 5zf.
See B. Suler, ‘Alchemy’, Encyclopaedia Judaica z (1972) 546, and P.W. van der Horst, ‘Mary the Jewish Alchemist’, in C.E. Evans, S.E. Porter, eds, Dictionary of New Testament Backgrounds, Downers Grove/Leicester z000, 679f.
See L.H. Feldman & M. Reinhold, Jewish Life and Thought Among Greeks and Romans, Minneapolis 1996, 46.
See L.J. Archer, Her Price is Beyond Rubies. The Jewish Woman in Graeco-Roman Palestine, Sheffield 1990, 69–100; and in general T. Ilan, Mine and Yours are Hers. Retrieving Women’s History from Rabbinic Literature, Leiden 1997.
T. Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine, Tübingen 1995.
See, e.g., M. Bar-Ilan, Some Jewish Women in Antiquity, Atlanta 1998, 31–35.
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van der Horst, P.W. (2002). Maria Alchemista, the First Female Jewish Author. In: Berger, S., Brocke, M., Zwiep, I. (eds) Zutot 2001. Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3730-2_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3730-2_6
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