Metals of antiquity

In the largest section of Lemerys book, the mineral bodies provide the chapter headings, beginning with ten metals. To the seven metals of antiquity three of more recent distinction were added bismuth, antimony, and arsenick (sic). Another eleven chapters follow, each focused on such important substances as quicklime, common salt, niter or saltpeter, sal armoniac (sic), vitriol, and sulphur. These are in a sense the privileged bodies, each serving as the starting material from which useful pharmaceutical preparations could be made, or interesting chemical manipulations could be reliably described. 

The discovery of metals and metal compounds is closely linked to the history of human civilization and advancement of industrial growth and development around the world. How human civilization has passed through centuries and the contribution of different metals and metal compounds for the human development and improvement of quality of life is beyond description and praise. Some of the metals are now known as the metals of antiquity—that is, those metals upon which human civilization took early origin, profusely grew, and is still making advanced growth. The following list shows different metals and metal compounds and the time in history when they were discovered. 

Silver, one of the native metals and second only to gold in its stability amongst the metals of antiquity, has provided several therapeutic agents which have been employed since the beginning of recorded history. These agents range from the metal itself, its salts and complexes with proteins and other macromolecules to the latest, AgSD. 

From simple beginnings in around 6000 BC to the end of the thirteenth century metallurgy knew only the seven metals of antiquity gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead and quicksilver. 

The chapter is devoted to seven metals of antiquity gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead, and mercury—the magnificent seven of metals that played a tremendous role both in the development of civilization and in various schools of natural philosophy. We shall tell you about sulphur, which was widely used long before our time, and about carbon. It may well be that carbon is the oldest chemical element known to mankind. Therefore, we shall begin the history of chemical elements with carbon. 

FIGURE 34 Melting point of the metals and alloys of antiquity. Heating techniques to attain temperatures higher than about 1500°C were developed as recently as the late nineteenth century. Only metals and alloys melting below 1500°C were, therefore, smelted in antiquity. 

Moreau, J.-F. and Hancock, R.G.V. (1999). Faces of European copper alloy cauldrons from Quebec and Ontario contact sites. In Metals in Antiquity, ed. Young, S.M.M., Pollard, A.M., Budd, P. and Ixer, R.A., BAR International Series 792, Archaeopress, Oxford, pp. 326-340. 

Martin Heinrich Klaproth made many brilliant contributions to analytical and mineralogical chemistry (33), and was a pioneer in the chemical investigation of antiquities such as Greek, Roman, and Chinese coins, ancient glasses, and prehistoric metallic objects (70). His papers are assembled in his Beitrage zur chemischen Kenntniss der Mineral-korper, a six-volume work. Although he never discovered an element in the sense of isolating it for the first time, his analytical work foreshadowed the discovery of uranium and zirconium and verified the discovery of tellurium and titanium. 

The next step away from the traditions of antiquity involved the addition of a third principle to Jabir s sulphur and mercury salt. Whereas the first two were components of metals, salt was considered an essential ingredient of living bodies. In this way alchemical theory became more than a theory of metallurgy and embraced all the material world. The three-principle theory is generally attributed to the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus (1493-1541), although it is probably older. Paracelsus asserted that sulphur, salt, and mercury form everything that lies in the four elements . 

How do we explain this difference from the fate of empires in Europe It was the task of nationalism to invent the new nation-states for the post-1945 world, but was this nationalism a different beast altogether from that of Europe Could we imagine nationalism in Europe sanctifying the multi-ethnic borders created by the Hapsburgs, Romanovs and Ottomans, as we do in Asia for the empires of British, Dutch, Spanish, French and Manchus If Asian nation-states were to perform this transformation from the immense variety and antiquity of their ethnic, political and civilisational forms, without fragmenting the leviathans of imperial construction, they would require a kind of magic—the imperial alchemy of my title. The base metal of empire would have to be transmuted into the gold of nationhood. 

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