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Thesis on the Letter from Isis to Horus and other early texts - Paul Ferguson - 07-01-2026
"I argue that some early alchemical compositions display literary ambitions that have been overlooked and downplayed (as implied in Festugière’s phrase) in previous scholarship. Experimentation does not seem restricted to technical operations: these writings are themselves experiments that result in elaborate and inventive compositions. I investigate in detail what this shift to a literary interpretation entails for four
early alchemical works, namely the Letter from Isis to Horus (Chapter I), the Dialogue of the Philosophers and Cleopatra (Chapter II), On the Letter Omega by Zosimus of Panopolis (Chapter III), and Memoirs 10-12 by the same author (Chapter IV). Each chapter starts with
a brief introduction to the work’s dating, transmission, and contents, followed by an analysis of how each writing in question approaches conventional textual forms in both expected and unexpected ways"
The Searched-for Thing: A Literary Approach to Four Early Alchemical Texts
Fabiana Lopes da Silveira
St Anne’s College, University of Oxford
A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Michaelmas 2020
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:26839725-c2c3-4631-a71c-a7e4cd64b7c7/files/d2514nk715