Alembic


An alembic is an alchemical still consisting of two vessels connected by a tube, used for distilling.

Description

The complete distilling apparatus consists of three parts: the "cucurbit", the still pot containing the liquid to be distilled, which is heated by a flame; the "head" or "cap" which fits over the mouth of the cucurbit to receive the vapors, with an attached downward-sloping "tube", leading to the "receiver" container. In the case of another distilling vessel, the retort, the "cap" and the "cucurbit" have been combined to form a single vessel. The anbik is also called the raʾs of the cucurbit. The liquid in the cucurbit is heated or boiled; the vapour rises into the anbik, where it cools by contact with the walls and condenses, running down the spout into the receiver. A modern descendant of the alembic is the pot still, used to produce distilled beverages.

History

's ambix is a helmet-shaped lid for gathering condensed mercury. For Athenaeus it is a bottle or flask. For later chemists it denotes various parts of crude distillation devices.
Alembic drawings appear in works of Cleopatra the Alchemist, Synesius, and Zosimos of Panopolis. There were alembics with two and three receivers. According to Zosimos of Panopolis, the alembic was invented by Mary the Jewess.
The anbik is described by Ibn al-Awwam in his Kitab al-Filaha, where he explains how rose-water is distilled. Amongst others, it is mentioned in the Mafatih al-Ulum of Khwarizmi and the Kitab al-Asrar of al-Razi. Some illustrations occur in the Latin translations of works which are attributed to Geber.

Metaphorical reference

ically, an alembic is something that refines as if by distillation.

Unicode

The Unicode character set specifies two symbols for alembics. The pictogram ⚗, and the ancient alchemical symbol ?. The latter is part of the newer UCS-4 addition that includes other ideographs like emojis and thus may not appear correctly on older browsers.