Page:Edward Thorpe — History of Chemistry, Volume I (1909).pdf/17



, as an art, was practised thousands of years before the Christian era; as a science, it dates no further back than the middle of the seventeenth century. The monumental records of Egypt and the accounts left us by Herodotus and other writers show that the ancient Egyptians, among the earliest nations of whom we have any records, had a considerable knowledge of processes essentially chemical in their nature. Their priests were adepts in certain chemical arts, and chemical laboratories were occasionally attached to their temples, as at Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis. It is to be supposed, too, that in a cultured class, as the priesthood undoubtedly was, there would be now and again curious and ingenious persons who would speculate on the nature and causes of the phenomena which they observed. But there is no