Zosimos of Panopolis

The earliest alchemist whose own writing survives — and most of it reads like a dream journal.

Zosimos wrote a 28-volume encyclopedia of practical metalworking — alloying, dyeing, gilding, refining — most of which describes operations Egyptian craftsmen had done for centuries. Set against this, his Visions are mystical allegories of being dismembered and reassembled, which later alchemists read as coded recipes. The practical books are a faithful lab notebook of late-antique chemistry. The visions are not chemistry at all; they are early Hermetic theology dressed as procedure.