In a recent issue of This Journal the writer had the privilege of publish­ing an English translation of the famous Leyden Papyrus X together with a few brief comments and notes on its history, contents, and sig­nificance.1 The present article is a similar translation of the contents of the less well-known Stockholm Papyrus. This papyrus likewise has never been translated into English as far as the writer is aware, although Stillman in his interesting "Story of Early Chemistry," has paraphrased several of the most representative recipes. It is offered here in the hope that it will prove of some interest to teachers and students of the history of chemistry. The contents of the papyrus are equally important for the early history of technical chemistry and, if anything, are more varied and comprehensive than those of the one at Leyden. As a matter of fact the two papyri are complementary and taken together they give an excellent cross-sectional view of the operations and aims of chemical technology in the beginning centuries of the Christian Era. They are the only original laboratory documents that have come down to us from that period and hence their great value for the history of chemistry, es­pecially on account of the light they throw upon the beginnings of alchemy.

The chemical arts and knowledge of the ancient world are known to us chiefly through the writings of Pliny, Dioscorides, Theophrastus, Vitruvius, and a few other writers, aided in a considerable degree by the examination and chemical analysis of the various relics and remains of the older civilizations. While these writings do furnish us with a very considerable degree of information concerning the beginnings of chemical knowledge they are, at the best, only indirect sources and are lacking in details. By a fortunate chance, however, there have come to light in recent years-two original sources in the form of two remarkable Greek papyri known to students of the early history of chemistry as the Leyden Papyrus X and the Stockholm Papyrus. These invaluable documents are by far the most ancient that we possess dealing with chemical arts and operations as such. The earliest authentic alchemical manuscript is that of St. Marks at Venice which is believed to have been transcribed from earlier writings during the tenth or eleventh centuries. These two papyri have, however, upon the basis of unquestioned philological and paleographic evidence, been ascertained to have been written at about the end of the third century A.D. so that they are by far the earliest original historical evidence that we have in our possession concerning the nature and the extent of ancient chemical knowledge. They are; therefore, of the highest value for the history of chemistry and throw a whole flood of light upon the origins of the pseudo-science, alchemy, as the researches of Berthelot have so clearly demonstrated.