Two ancient recipe papyri: craft or alchemy?
The Leiden and Stockholm papyri give recipes for metals, dyes, and stones. Similar subjects do not by themselves prove a direct link between the texts.
What the first papyrus contains
The Cambridge Alchemy Reader presents selections from the Leiden Papyrus X and the Stockholm Papyrus as Greek technical recipe collections from the end of the third century CE, and describes their content: procedures for metals, alloys, dyes, and artificial precious stones. Cambridge University Press ↗
Comparing collections
A peer-reviewed study in BJHS Themes compares ancient handbooks and Graeco-Egyptian collections of alchemical recipes, including both papyri and the works of Zosimos. It warns against oversimplifying the textual relationships between them. Cambridge University Press / BJHS Themes ↗
What is still pending
The research record treats the anthology dates as scholarly models and notes that the museum catalogue and object records for the papyri are still to be attached. A likely close scribal relationship between the two papyri is a separate claim awaiting manuscript analysis.
Gold-like material: craft, trick, or theory?
Technical recipe content and later interpretive claims are kept apart in the record. When a recipe says how to make something look like gold, is that fraud, craft, or theory? What in the text would decide?