His hands shook with excitement as the stooped man opened the rectangular box. Yes, there were the documents he had expected and hoped to find! For well over 30 years, he had looked for verifiable sources about the library of al-Sīmāwī, a 13th century expert on alchemy and magic. But in vain. The old man’s dogged determination had led him to Cairo, to Istanbul, to the Vatican, trying to sleuth an ancient ‘paper’ trail.
He had painstakingly established that while al-‘Irāqī’s 13th-century autograph manuscript was now lost, one source of his illustrations was recognised: the Book of Images. It has been traditionally attributed to the 4th-century Egyptian alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis and preserved in a copy made in Egypt in 1270! And today, finally, he had been allowed access to the vaults of the British Museum where a kindly academic had led him unerringly to this section of treasures.
The old man examined the contents of the box carefully, his heart racing. There was the familiar drawing of three men with their hands raised as if in surrender! There was no doubt any more – this indeed was the source for the drawing he had found in the book written centuries later!
A lifetime quest had just been fulfilled. Slowly, the old man looked all around him. Thousands of boxes in the vaults held the past in sacred trust – waiting for mankind to rediscover what had gone before. Zosimos of Panapolis and al-Sīmāwī smiled, as it were, from their places in the Universe. The old man whispered to The Book of Images, “Without this place, I would never have found you!”
He had painstakingly established that while al-‘Irāqī’s 13th-century autograph manuscript was now lost, one source of his illustrations was recognised: the Book of Images. It has been traditionally attributed to the 4th-century Egyptian alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis and preserved in a copy made in Egypt in 1270! And today, finally, he had been allowed access to the vaults of the British Museum where a kindly academic had led him unerringly to this section of treasures.
The old man examined the contents of the box carefully, his heart racing. There was the familiar drawing of three men with their hands raised as if in surrender! There was no doubt any more – this indeed was the source for the drawing he had found in the book written centuries later!
A lifetime quest had just been fulfilled. Slowly, the old man looked all around him. Thousands of boxes in the vaults held the past in sacred trust – waiting for mankind to rediscover what had gone before. Zosimos of Panapolis and al-Sīmāwī smiled, as it were, from their places in the Universe. The old man whispered to The Book of Images, “Without this place, I would never have found you!”
