Chrysocolla (gold-solder, Greek ; Latin chrȳsocolla, oerugo, santerna; Syriac "tankar" ( Bar Bahlul),

alchemical symbol Alchemical symbols were used to denote chemical elements and compounds, as well as alchemy, alchemical apparatus and processes, until the 18th century. Although notation was partly standardized, style and symbol varied between alchemists. Lüdy ...

🜸), also known as "goldsmith's solder" and "solder of Macedonia" (

Pseudo-Democritus Pseudo-Democritus is the name used by scholars for the anonymous authors of a number of Greek writings that were falsely attributed to the pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus ( 460–370 BC). Several of these writings, most notably the ...

), denotes: * The

soldering Soldering (; ) is a process of joining two metal surfaces together using a filler metal called solder. The soldering process involves heating the surfaces to be joined and melting the solder, which is then allowed to cool and solidify, creatin ...

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

. * The materials used for soldering gold, as well as certain gold

alloy An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which in most cases at least one is a metal, metallic element, although it is also sometimes used for mixtures of elements; herein only metallic alloys are described. Metallic alloys often have prop ...

s, still used by goldsmiths. Martin Ruland (''Lexicon alchemiae'') explains chrysocolla as molybdochalkos, a copper-lead alloy. In

Leyden papyrus X The Leyden papyrus X (P. Leyden X) is a papyrus codex written in Greek at about the end of the 3rd century A.D.E.R.Caley, ''The Leyden Paprus X: An English Translation with Brief Notes''p.1149 "These two papyri have, however, upon the basis of unque ...

recipe 31 chrysocolla is an alloy composed of 4 parts copper, 2 parts

asem Asem (also spelled Aasem, Assem, Asim, Aasim, Assim ') is a male given name of Arabic origin, which means "savior, protector, guardian, defender." Asem is also a female given name of Kazakh origin, which means "beauty, beautiful, refined, gracef ...

(a kind of tin-copper alloy) and 1 part gold. Argyrochrysocolla appears to designate an alloy of gold and silver. * A mix of copper and iron salts, produced by the dissolution of a metallic vein by water, either spontaneously or by introducing water into a mine from winter to summer, and letting the mass dry during summer, which results in a yellow product. *

Malachite Malachite () is a copper Carbonate mineral, carbonate hydroxide mineral, with the chemical formula, formula Basic copper carbonate, Cu2CO3(OH)2. This opaque, green-banded mineral crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system, and most often for ...

(green

carbonate A carbonate is a salt of carbonic acid, (), characterized by the presence of the carbonate ion, a polyatomic ion with the formula . The word "carbonate" may also refer to a carbonate ester, an organic compound containing the carbonate group ...

of copper), and other alkaline copper salts of green colour.

Azurite Azurite or '' Azure spar'Krivovichev V. G.'' Mineralogical glossary. Scientific editor A. G. Bulakh. — St.Petersburg: St.Petersburg Univ. Publ. House. 2009. — 556 p. — ISBN 978-5-288-04863-0. ''(in Russian)'' is a soft, deep-blue copp ...

, the blue congener of malachite, was known as armenion, as it was mined in

Armenia Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of West Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia (country), Georgia to the north and Azerbaijan to ...

. On heating, malachite decomposes to

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

and

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

, the latter inducing the soldering effect. According to an older opinion, chrysocolla was

borax The BORAX Experiments were a series of safety experiments on boiling water nuclear reactors conducted by Argonne National Laboratory in the 1950s and 1960s at the National Reactor Testing Station in eastern Idaho.

, which had been found in ancient gold foundries and is still used for soldering gold. Aristoteles (''De mirabilibus'') mentions that the Chalcedonian island Demonesus has a mine of

cyan Cyan () is the color between blue and green on the visible spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a predominant wavelength between 500 and 520 nm, between the wavelengths of green and blue. In the subtractive color system, or CMYK c ...

() and chrysocolla.

Theophrastus Theophrastus (; ; c. 371 – c. 287 BC) was an ancient Greek Philosophy, philosopher and Natural history, naturalist. A native of Eresos in Lesbos, he was Aristotle's close colleague and successor as head of the Lyceum (classical), Lyceum, the ...

(''De lapidibus'') describes chrysocolla as a kind of "false emerald" found in gold and copper mines, used for soldering gold. Pliny ('' Historia Naturalis'') and

Celsus Celsus (; , ''Kélsos''; ) was a 2nd-century Greek philosopher and opponent of early Christianity. His literary work '' The True Word'' (also ''Account'', ''Doctrine'' or ''Discourse''; Greek: )Hoffmann p.29 survives exclusively via quotati ...

mention that chrysocolla is extracted along with gold, and is used as a pigment and medicament.

Dioscorides Pedanius Dioscorides (, ; 40–90 AD), "the father of pharmacognosy", was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of (in the original , , both meaning "On Materia medica, Medical Material") , a 5-volume Greek encyclopedic phar ...

(''

De materia medica (Latin name for the Greek work , , both meaning "On Medical Material") is a pharmacopoeia of medicinal plants and the medicines that can be obtained from them. The five-volume work was written between 50 and 70 CE by Pedanius Dioscorides, ...

'') describes the purification of the ore and its use in healing wounds, also noting its poisonous effect. * Greenish copper salts obtained by boiling infant's urine and

natron Natron is a naturally occurring mixture of sodium carbonate decahydrate ( Na2CO3·10H2O, a kind of soda ash) and around 17% sodium bicarbonate (also called baking soda, NaHCO3) along with small quantities of sodium chloride and sodium sulfate. ...

in copper vessels. The resulting copper salts were scraped off and used for soldering gold. Infant's urine (Greek , Latin ) appears in many ancient recipes (Dioscorides, Pliny, Celsus, etc.) as a source of

phosphate Phosphates are the naturally occurring form of the element phosphorus. In chemistry, a phosphate is an anion, salt, functional group or ester derived from a phosphoric acid. It most commonly means orthophosphate, a derivative of orthop ...

s and

ammonia Ammonia is an inorganic chemical compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the chemical formula, formula . A Binary compounds of hydrogen, stable binary hydride and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinctive pu ...

. * A particular copper hydrosilicate is named

chrysocolla Chrysocolla ( ) is a hydrous copper phyllosilicate mineral and mineraloid with the formula (''x'' < 1) or . The structure of the mineral has been questioned, as a 2006 spectrographic study suggest ma ...

by modern mineralogists.

References

{{reflist History of metallurgy Alchemical substances

See also

References