IWD: In Praise of Maria the Jewess

Maria the Jewess and the invention of distillation
Without the invention of the still, I wouldn’t have a job. The general historical consensus is that the first person known to have distilled alcohol was the great Arab alchemist Jābir Ibn Hayyan (c.AD 721-815). His part in the eventual invention of Gin is unsurprisingly the least of the accolades and perhaps on International Men’s Day, I’ll go into that further.

Behind every great man is a great woman, but in the case of Jābir, there was a great woman about 700 years before him. Maria the Jewess. Maria lived in the Egyptian city of Alexandria and is considered one of the first people that wrote about alchemy. 

What is alchemy?
Alchemy isn’t the crackpot pursuit of turning lead into gold. Well, at least it’s not only that. Alchemy was a mixture of science, pseudo-science and philosophy and was the progenitor to chemistry and modern medicine. Western alchemy, the one we know the most about, was defined by its dogged pursuit of three very specific objectives: creating an elixir of life (ie a medicine which could prolong life), the discovery of the alkahest, a universal solvent that could dissolve any material while retaining its chemical properties and of course turning lead into gold.

It’s unclear what Jābir and Mary’s aims were but regardless of that, the process of alchemy itself led to inventions and the progression of human scientific understanding. 

So why was she so great?
Well, there are three inventions credited to her:

The Alembic. The alembic was the first known still, so it’s quite possible Maria was the inventor, or certainly a very early practitioner, of distillation. The specific still she invented, the tribikos, is used in chemistry labs to this day

Kerotakis. This is an airtight container used to heat substances and collect vapours. Its use in the Hermetic arts (too long to explain here) gave us the phrase ‘hermetically sealed.

Bain-marie. An early boiler, still used extensively in chemistry

We don’t know what happened to Maria, but tonight I shall be raising a glass to her, knowing that my drink wouldn’t taste half as nice were it not for her amazing sciencing.