Alchemists’ greatest hits now on disk

Turning base metals such as lead or copper into silver or gold, the dream of alchemists in the Middle Ages, never came to be. But the conversion of a 400-year-old alchemical classic into a virtual resource available worldwide certainly appears golden.

Through the support of the Brittingham Fund, the libraries are turning an enigmatic work into a digital reproduction of images and encoded text.

Only two other copies of this first edition of Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae (Hamburg, 1595) are known to exist. It is notable for its elaborate, full-page hand-colored engravings heightened with gold and silver.

Infused with a strange combination of Christianity and magic, the book was condemned by the Sorbonne in 1625 but remained popular throughout the 17th century and still attracts attention from scholars throughout the world.

The book is one of the centerpieces in the Duveen Collection in Special Collections. Purchased a half century ago, the collection contains more than 2,000 works, primarily in alchemy and chemistry; the earliest dates from 1475.

The pages of Khunrath’s book measure nearly 19 inches wide by 17 inches tall. Four engraved circular illustrations in the volume are packed with symbolic as well as textual information. There are also 24 pages of letterpress text.

The lines of text on the engravings radiate outward or surround the images concentrically. Robert Nelsen, who recently earned a master’s degree in classics from UW–Madison, has produced a thoughtful transcription of this engraved text. Classics professors William Courtenay and James McKeown have lent their expertise.

The largest, full-color digital images were stitched together from two half images of the circular plates by Steven Dast in the library’s digital production facility. With the goal of providing a searchable database for the resource, a coding standard created through an international cooperative project called the Text Encoding Initiative will be applied to the text. Technology librarian Peter Gorman, with Nelsen, will manage the effort.