Emerald Tablet

History

The Emerald Tablet is first found in Arabic: in the Book of the Secret of Creation ascribed to Balīnās, and in Jābir’s Second Book of the Element of the Foundation. Hugo of Santalla put it into Latin in the twelfth century, and Philip of Tripoli’s Secret of Secrets carried another Latin. The vulgate was first printed at Nuremberg in 1541 with Hortulanus’s commentary; an English followed in The Mirror of Alchimy (1597), a German by Kriegsmann in 1657, and Isaac Newton wrote out the Latin and his own English. Julius Ruska edited the Arabic witnesses in 1926.

How it works

The rows are the sentences of the Latin vulgate as Ruska numbers them, the eighth in two, with the finding of the tablet before them and the close after. Up to three versions stand side by side; a version that lacks a sentence says so. The Arabic texts carry Ruska’s German beneath them, the 1541 print can be read as printed or with its abbreviations expanded, and Ruska’s notes on where the versions part are quoted in his German under each sentence.

How it was checked

Every text was read from the page images its source names, with long s, the scribes’ abbreviations and Newton’s struck-out words kept as written. The tests confirm that each of the ten versions links its source, that each uses only the sentences of Ruska’s numbering, that the Arabic witnesses’ German covers only sentences they have, and that the expanded 1541 text keeps no long s or abbreviation mark.

Limits

Ruska’s brackets and variant numbers are left out of the Arabic, and his notes are given in his German, untranslated. The 1541 scan and Newton’s manuscript images are linked rather than copied, as their licences ask; the transcriptions of The Chymistry of Isaac Newton and the English of Holmyard and Fulton are not used, since their licences do not allow it. The alignment is by sentence, not by word.