Although we have cited the ancient Egyptians as practising the chemical arts, there is no proof that these arts actually originated with them. China, India, Chaldæa have each in turn been regarded as the birthplace of the various technical processes from which chemistry may be said to have taken its rise. Nevertheless, it is mainly from Egyptian records, or from writings avowedly based on information from Egyptian sources, that such knowledge as we possess of the earliest chemical processes is derived. It is significant that the word “chemistry” has its origin in _chemi_, “the black land,” the ancient name for Egypt. The art itself was constantly spoken of as the “Egyptian art.” “The word _chemistry_,” says Boerhaave in the Prolegomena of his _New Method of Chemistry_ (Shaw and Chambers’s translation, London, 1727), in _Greek_ should be wrote χημíα, and in _Latin_ and _English_ _chemia_ and _chemistry_; not as usual, _chymia_ and _chymistry_. The first author in whom the word is found is _Plutarch_, who lived under the Emperors _Domitian_, _Nerva_, and _Trajan_. That philosopher, in his treatise of _Isis_ and _Osiris_, takes occasion to observe that _Egypt, in the sacred dialect of the country, was called by the same name as the_ black _of the eye_—viz., χημíα—by which he seems to intimate that the word _chemia_ in the _Egyptian_ language signified black, and that the country, _Egypt_, might take its denomination from the _blackness_ of the soil. But [continues Boerhaave] the etymology and grammatical signification of the name is not so easily dispatched. The critics and antiquaries, among whom it has been a great subject of inquiry, will not let it pass without some further disquisition. Instead of _black_, some will have it originally denote _secret_, or _occult_; and hence derive it from the _Hebrew_ _chaman_, or _haman_—a _mystery_, whose radix is _cham_. And, accordingly, _Plutarch_ observes that _Egypt_, in the same sacred dialect, is sometimes wrote in _Greek_ χαμíα—_chamia_; whence the word is easily deduced further from _Cham_, eldest son of Noah, by whom Egypt was first peopled after the deluge, and from whom, in the Scripture style, it is called the _land of Cham_, or _Chem_. Now, that _chaman_, or _haman_, properly signifies _secret_ appears from the same _Plutarch_, who, mentioning an ancient author named _Menethes Sibonita_, who had asserted that _Ammon_ and _Hammon_ were used to denote the god of _Egypt_, _Plutarch_ takes this occasion to observe that in the _Egyptian_ language anything secret or occult was called by the same name, ἅμμον—_Hammon_.... Lastly, the learned _Bochart_, keeping to the same sense of the word, chooses to derive it from the _Arabic_ _chema_, or _kema_—to _hide_; adding that there is an _Arabic_ book of secrets called by the same name _Kemi_.