Ancient Gold-workers

There Is a papyrus which gives recipes for various alloys used in the manufacture of cups and vases, and making gold and silver luk, for gilding and silvering, and for tasting the purity of precious metáis. Other recipes, says the Edinburgh Review, teach the method of falsifying them by adding báser meflfcls - an operation called diplosis, or doubling, for the mass of the gold and silver was doubled, while their color remained unchanged, and, as the compiler of the manual remarks, a skilied workman would find it difficult, or even impossible, to detect the fraud. The recipes which recur most frequently describe various modes of preparing asem, a word which originally meant a natural alloy of gold and silver known to the Greeks as electrum. It was at first looked upon as a distinct metal, was considered sacred to Júpiter, and was designated by the sign of that planet, but at a later pesiod the name was applied to all alloys, and M. Berthelot remarks that in this f act seems to He the explanatión of the origin of alchemy. Bo(th gold and sílver could be extracted from genuine asem, and it seemed as though it could be changed at the will of the operator into either one or the other; it could also be made artificially by mingling i gold and silver, or closely imitated by j some of the numerous alloys, eleven or twelve varieties of which are described 6i tlie papyrus of Leyden.