I never knew that a collection of Greek alchemical texts existed with French translation in four volumes, but it does: Edition: M. Berthelot/Ch. Em. Ruelle, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs , Paris 1887-1888. Better still, much of it is online.
- Volume 1 (Archive.org)
- Volume 2-3 (Archive.org). Vol. 2 is Zosimos; p.244 of the PDF is the start of vol. 3, old authors and technical texts and commentators.
- Volume 3-4 (Google books). Volume 4 seems to be indexes.
The packaging of these volumes in PDF’s is unfortunate. Nor do I see various texts of the Byzantine period, such as Stephanos of Alexandria. But … still worth knowing about.
From a quote by Fredrick Engels in ‘Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy’, chapter 3.
“The philosopher’s stone has many God like properties and the Egyptian-Greek alchemists of the first two centuries of our era had a hand in the development of Christian doctrines, as data given by Kopp and Bertholet have proved.”
Would you have any idea what reference Engles used to quote how Bertholet had proof of this?
None at all. Possibly look at any German edition of Engels? English translations of continental texts tend to omit footnotes.