This is my hand-printed linocut portrait of the earliest recorded alchemist: Mary the Jewess (also known as Maria Hebraea, or Miriam, or Maria Prophetissa). The ancient alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis (who lived around 300 CE), cites her research and innovations. She must have predated him, in the early centuries of the common era, and several scholars suspect she lived in Alexandria, Egyptian in the first century. Zosimos relates that she wrote a treatise called "On Furnaces and Apparatuses" and she invented, or at least described ovens, apparatuses for cooking and distilling, and other alchemical experimentation, made of metal, clay, and glass with joints sealed using fat, wax, starch paste, and fatty clay. Amongst inventions attributed to her are the bain-marie (named in her honour, essentially a double boiler, still used in cooking today), the kerotakis (which allowed one to heat items while collecting vapors) and the tribikos (a kind of alembic with three arms that was used to obtain substances purified by distillation, still used in chemistry labs today). I've included these three devices in my portrait. She appears in the writings of other alchemists in the Greek tradition, like Christianos in the 7th century and in the writings of early Arab authors.
Sadly we know very little about Mary's life, but some of her books are quoted by others. Like other alchemists, her words about her explorations of substances are quite mystical and hard to understand. Alchemists disguised their works to avoid accusations of witchcraft or sorcery or to keep their research findings secret from most people. She spoke of joining metals of different sexes, or the death of metals - things which do not fit with our modern scientific knowledge. Some people credit her with discovering hydrochloric acid. She is credited with inventing the silver sulfide process, still used in metalworking today. She is believed to have discovered caput mortum, a dark purple dye. Though alchemists' understanding of materials was not scientific, the methodologies and apparatus developed definitely involved scientific thinking and form the foundation of what was to become chemistry. Mary's "On Furnaces and Apparatuses" contains the first description of a still. The instruments attributed to her, and her innovations for sealing apparatus were well-designed and played a role in chemistry and cooking for many many centuries or even persist today. And that is truly extraordinary!
My colour scheme is influenced by the deep purple of caput mortum. In Arab texts she was called "Daughter of Plato" - a term used in Western alchemy for white sulfur, so I also use a yellow-gold colour in my portrait. There's a portrait of her in German physician and alchemist Michael Maier's book 'Symbola Aurea Mensae Duodecim Nationum,' but since it was published in 1617, I don't think it actually provides any insight to her appearance or clothing. I was more influenced in imagining what she would have looked like by researching the clothing of Hellenistic Jews of the first to third century of the common era and the frescos of the Dura-Europos synagogue built in Syria in 244 CE.