Greece alchemy

The early center of alchemy was the intellectual capital of ancient Greece, Alexandria. Very little remains of the original alchemical manuscripts from ancient Greece. The rise of Christianity and concerns about disrupting the economy eventually led the Roman Emperor Diocletian to... 

Was Chinese alchemy important for the emergence of Western alchemy We do not know for certain, but it may have been. Trade routes and military conquest both involve two-way dissemination of ideas and techniques, and Eastern ideas may have come directly, or filtered through India, into the Greek, Roman, and Arabic worlds. Alexander the Great of Macedon and Greece was pushing eastward in his conquests at about the same time that Chinese alchemy was taking clear shape. 

Even before alchemy became a subject of study, many chemical reactions were used and the products applied to daily life. For example, the first metals used were probably gold and copper, which can be found in the metallic state. Copper can also be readily formed by the reduction of malachite—basic copper carbonate, Cu2(C03)(0H)2—in charcoal fires. Silver, tin, antimony, and lead were also known as early as 3000 BC. Iron appeared in classical Greece and in other areas around the Mediterranean Sea by 1500 BC. At about the same time, colored glasses and ceramic glazes, largely composed of silicon dioxide (Si02, the major component of sand) and other metallic oxides, which had been melted and allowed to cool to amorphous solids, were introduced. 

Alchemy in classical Greece and post-classical Alexandria... 

Whilst Greece and Italy sank deeper and deeper into har-barism, arts and science flourished under. Arabian dominion, and the academies of Spain were thronged with students from all parts of tlie Cliristian world. The knowledge of alchemy spmd fiom this source over M estem Hurape, and in the thirteenth century we find alchemists of the Arabian school... 

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