Elementymology & Elements Multidict

memory peg	Dense liquid metal which has a high surface tension and will form a yellow/green/deep-gray oxide melting point -39 °C; -38 °F boiling point 357 °C; 674 °F density 13.55 g/cc; 845.65 pounds/cubic foot
Known to the ancients
ΰδραργυρος (hydrargyros) = liquid silver (Greek) Mercury after the planet Mercurius

Mercury was already known in the Antiquity by Chinese and in India. We can also find Mercury in Egyptian graves that date of around 1500 BC.

Mercury is rather easily isolated from its ore, cinnabar (HgS), and was used in the Mediterranean world for extracting metals by amalgamation as early as 500 BC, possibly even earlier. Cinnabar was widely used in the ancient world as a pigment (vermilion). For over a thousand years, up to AD 1500, alchemists regarded the metal as a key to the transmutation of base metals to Gold and employed amalgams both for gilding and for producing imitation gold and silver.

Theophrastus of Eresos (371-286 BC), student of Aristotle and his successor as the head of the Lyceum in Athens, wrote the earliest surviving scientific book on minerals, De Lapidibus (On Stones). It was written most probably during 315-314 BC. He states that quicksilver quicksilver "... is made by pounding cinnabar with vinegar in a copper mortar with a copper pestle." (note). Dioscorides obtained it from the same mineral with the aid of iron, employing at the same time a primitive distillation apparatus.

The alchemists used various secret or mystical names, partly of Arab origin, Mercury was named Azoth (or Azoq), Zaibac, Zeida, Zaibar (Saibar), Ventus albus, Argentum vivum, etc.

In astrology alchemy the seven heavenly bodies known to the ancients were associated with seven metals also known in antiquity:

Sun (Sol)	Gold (Aurum)
Mercury (Mercurius)	Mercury (Hydrargyrum)
Venus	Copper (Cuprum)
Moon (Luna)	Silver (Argentum)
Mars	Iron (Ferrum)
Jupiter	Tin (Stannum)
Saturn	Lead (Plumbum)

The long history of Mercury is reflected in the many different words for this metal. Many names are translations of "liquid silver", many other languages use the alchemistic name derived from the planet Mercurius, but there are several other roots as well. See the list of names to the left and in the overview of Mercury in over 100 languages (click here).

Mercury was considered the basis of metals, close to Gold and therefore it was called after the planet Mercurius, the planet nearest to the sun (= Gold). Others say that, because of its mobility, it is named after Mercurius, the messenger of the gods in Roman mythology and that the identification was later.

• Mary Elvira Weeks, Discovery of the Elements, comp. rev. by Henry M. Leicester (Easton, Pa.: Journal of Chemical Education, 1968), pp. 46-51.
• Laszlo Takacs, "Quicksilver from Cinnabar: The First Documented Mechanochemical Reaction?". Journal of Metals, January 2000, p. 12-13. (on-line).
• The Geology of Quicksilver: The strange and hazardous element mercury is still of scientific interest. (on-line).
• James B. Calvert, "Mercury" 2002 (on-line).