Papyrus Graecus
Holmiensis (The Stockholm papyrus) is a codex consisting of 15 leaves
containing 154 recipes for the manufacture of dyes and colors used in fashioning
artificial stones. Written in Greek around AD 300, it is one of the earliest
complete treatises of its kind and an important vehicle for the transmission of
practical information from the Alexandrian (Old Egyptian) world to Byzantium and
Western Europe. The manuscript appears to have been written by the same scribe
as a similar codex in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, also containing
different recipes for the manufacture of materials. Both texts clearly include
the recipes of practitioners. Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis was presented to
the Swedish Royal Academy of Antiquities in 1832 by the consul general of Sweden
and Norway at Alexandria. It most likely had been discovered shortly before that
date, possibly at Thebes.