Library › Greek: Science & Medicine › The Doubling of Moses
The Doubling of Moses is a very short alchemical recipe preserved in the corpus of Greek alchemical writings under the name of Moses. It is one of the late antique pseudepigraphic texts attributed to him. It lists copper, arsenic, sulphur and sandarach, ground in radish oil and heated, and tells how the product is combined with gold to multiply the precious metal.
"Doubling" recipes, which claimed to increase a quantity of gold or silver, were a basic type in early alchemy, related to the practical metal recipes of Egyptian workshops. This text shows the technical side of Greek alchemy and the practice of attaching such recipes to revered names like Moses.
About this edition. The Greek text comes from the Eulogikon open corpus of public-domain editions (standard reference: CAAG II 38). Every word has been analyzed with odyCy, a neural language model for Ancient Greek — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon (LSJ). The Greek alchemical recipes under Moses' name are late antique pseudepigrapha (TLG 2181 'Moses Alchem.').