|
Zosimos of Panopolis ((ギリシア語:Ζώσιμος; also known by the Latin name Zosimus Alchemista, i.e. "Zosimus the Alchemist")) was a Greek alchemist and Gnostic mystic who lived at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century AD. He was born in Panopolis, present day Akhmim in the south of Egypt, and flourished ca. 300. He wrote the oldest known books on alchemy, of which quotations in the Greek language and translations into Syriac or Arabic are known. He is one of about 40 authors represented in a compendium of alchemical writings that was probably put together in Byzantium (Constantinople) in the 7th or 8th century AD and that exists in manuscripts in Venice and Paris. Stephen of Alexandria is another. Arabic translations of texts by Zosimos were discovered in 1995 in a copy of the book ''Keys of Mercy and Secrets of Wisdom'' by Ibn Al-Hassan Ibn Ali Al-Tughra'i', a Persian alchemist. Unfortunately, the translations were incomplete and seemingly non-verbatim. The famous index of Arabic books, ''Kitab al-Fihrist'' by Ibn Al-Nadim, mentions earlier translations of four books by Zosimos, however due to inconsistency in transliteration, these texts were attributed to names "Thosimos", "Dosimos" and "Rimos"; also it is possible that two of them are translations of the same book. F. Sezgin has found 15 manuscripts of Zozimos in six libraries, at Tehran, Caire, Istanbul, Gotha, Dublin and Rampur. Michèle Mertens analyzes what is known about those manuscripts in her translation of Zozimos, concluding that the Arabic tradition seems extremely rich and promising, and regretting the difficulty of access to these materials, until translated editions are available. ==Alchemy== In about 300 AD, Zosimos provided one of the first definitions of alchemy as the study of "the composition of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodying, drawing the spirits from bodies and bonding the spirits within bodies." In general, Zosimos' understanding of alchemy reflects the influence of Hermetic and Gnostic spiritualities. He asserted that the fallen angels taught the arts of metallurgy to the women they married, an idea also recorded in the ''Book of Enoch'' and later repeated in the Gnostic ''Apocryphon of John''. In a fragment preserved by Syncellus, Zosimos wrote: The external processes of metallic transmutation—the transformations of lead and copper into silver and gold (see the Stockholm papyrus)—had always to mirror an inner process of purification and redemption. Wrote Zosimos in ''Concerning the true Book of Sophe, the Egyptian, and of the Divine Master of the Hebrews and the Sabaoth Powers'': Greek alchemists used what they called ὕδωρ θεῖον, meaning both ''divine water'', and ''sulphurous water''. For Zosimos, the alchemical vessel was imagined as a baptismal font, and the tincturing vapours of mercury and sulphur were likened to the purifying waters of baptism, which perfected and redeemed the Gnostic initiate. Zosimos drew upon the Hermetic image of the ''krater'' or mixing bowl, a symbol of the divine mind in which the Hermetic initiate was "baptized" and purified in the course of a visionary ascent through the heavens and into the transcendent realms. Similar ideas of a spiritual baptism in the "waters" of the transcendent Pleroma are characteristic of the Sethian Gnostic texts unearthed at Nag Hammadi. This image of the alchemical vessel as baptismal font is central to his ''Visions'', discussed below. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Zosimos of Panopolis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|