Fourth century BC alchemical methods for obtaining metallic mercury from the mineral cinnabar revisited
Mercury inspired the earliest alchemical philosophers. The metal, commonly known as quicksilver, was thought to be more than an ordinary liquid or solid, but a substance that existed between the two, as well as between life and death, heaven and earth. And the desire to understand its strange nature drove some of the earliest alchemical studies, some of which date back more than 2000 years.
‘These recipes are not really for the production of mercury,’ says Lucia Maini, a chemist at the University of Bologna in Italy. ‘They’re more to grab the secret of its nature.’
Maini and co-authors have been combining modern chemical and historical research into four very early methods for creating mercury from cinnabar – a bright red mineral of mercury sulfide (HgS), once commonly used as a pigment, that’s been mined in Europe for more than 4000 years.
Metallic mercury was also sometimes found in the cinnabar deposits, which may have suggested the connection to early alchemists, Maini says.