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The chemical history of ammonia commences in Egypt with Sal Ammoniac. This is mentioned by Pliny under the name of Hammoniacus sal. Dioscorides also alludes to it; hut in neither case does the description given fit in satisfactorily with the product known to us. Dioscorides, for instance, states that sal ammoniac is particularly prized if it can lie easily split up into rectangular fragments. It has been conjectured that what was called sal ammoniac by the ancient writers was, at least sometimes, rock salt.

The name is generally supposed to have been derived from that of the Egyptian deity, Amn or Amen, or Ammon as the Greeks called him, and in the belief that he was the same god as Jupiter he is referred to in classical literature as Zeus-Ammon or Jupiter-Ammon. The principal temple of this god was situated in an oasis of the Libyan desert which was then known as Ammonia (now Siwah), and if, as is supposed, the salt was found or produced in that locality its name is thus accounted for. Gum ammoniacum was likewise so called in the belief that it was obtained in that district, though the gum with which we are familiar and which comes from India and Persia, is quite a different article from the African gum the name of which it has usurped. Pliny derives the name of the salt from the Greek "ammos," sand, as it was found in the sand of the desert; an explanation which overlooks the fact that the stuff was called by a similar name in a country where the sand was not called ammos. In old Latin, French, and English writings "armoniac" is often met with. This was not inaccurate spelling; it was suggested by the opinion that the word was connected with Greek,