Zosimos was a Greek alchemist and Gnostic Mystic who was born in Panopolis, present day Akhmim in the South of Egypt. He wrote the oldest known books on alchemy, of which only quotations in the original Greek language or translations into Syriac or Arabic are known. He is one of about 40 authors represented in a compendium of alchemical ( writings that was probably put together in Byzantium (Constantinople) in the 7th or 8th century AD and that exists in manuscripts in Venice and Paris.