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Vol. 4, No. 8
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The Stockholm Papyrus
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999
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152. Shading Off of Colors.
When
you desire to shade off the brightness of a color then boil sulphur
with cow's milk, and the color will be easily shaded off in it.
153. Dyeing of Madder Purple.
After
bluing, sprinkle the wool with ashes and trample it down with them in a
convenient manner. Then press {the) liquid out of potter's clay and
wash off the blued wool therein. Rinse it in salt water and mordant it.
You will know if it is sufficiently mordanted when it sinks down in the
kettle and the fluid becomes clear. Then heat rain water so that you
cannot put your hand in it. Mix roasted, pulverized and sifted madder
root, i. e., madder, with white vinegar, a half a mina of madder to a
mina of wool, and mix a quarter of a choenix of bean meal with the
madder root. Then put these in a kettle and stir up. Then put the wool
in, in doing so, stir incessantly and make it uniform. Take it out and
rinse it in salt water. If you wish the color to take on a beautiful
gloss and not to fade, then brighten it with alum. Rinse the wool out
again in salt water, let it dry in the shade and in doing so protect it
from smoke.
154. (No Title.) (On a separate leaf from the rest of the recipes.)
San,
Berbeloch, Chthotho, Miach, Sandum, Echnin, Zaguel, accept me who comes
before thee. Trust thyself (to the God), annoint thyself and thou shall
see him with thine eyes.
III. Commentary
The
excellent translations of the Stockholm Papyrus into modern Greek and
German by Lagercrantz leaves little to be desired in the way of a
philological and etymological commentary. This translator, however, did
not enter into the general and technical significance of the recipes of
the collection. It is the purpose of these few paragraphs to discuss
this phase of the collection in the briefest way possible, since space
does not permit the extended treatment of these matters that could be
given, especially in comparing them with the other authors and works in
early technical arts, and in discussing their value for the early
history of alchemy and technical chemistry.
It
is very evident that the recipes in the collection can be grouped into
three main classes. The first few deal with the manufacture of alloys
and are nearly identical with those of this type that occur in the
Leyden Papyrus X. On account of this similarity no further comments are
needed upon them here. The second type deals with the cleaning and
imitation of gems and precious stones, while the third group includes
those treating of the various arts connected with the dyeing of cloth.
These two groups will now be discussed separately.
There
are exactly seventy-one recipes that deal with the cleaning and
imitation of precious stones or with closely related operations. Ten of
these, most of which follow immediately after the recipes for alloys,
deal with cleaning genuine or making artificial pearls. The cleaning
methods used were largely empirical in their nature. One method was to
coat the pearl with some suitable glutinous mixture, then to peel this
off again. This latter operation apparently removed the objectionable
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