"Divine water" in the alchemical writings of pseudo-Democritus

The name of the chemical solution (divine water) or (sulfur water) is characterised by semantic ambiguity: the term theion means both "divine" and "sulfur," and Greek alchemists frequently play on this polysemy. This article analyses the use of this and similar expressions in the writings of pseudo-Democritus from both a technical and a philological point of view. A fragment preserved by the alchemists Moses and Synesius shows that pseudo-Democritus knows two different kinds of this "water," the second of which recalls a recipe found in the chemical Leiden Papyrus, and that the composition of the substance determines the form of its name.