Quantum deception attempts turning water into wine

The Stockholm papyrus, a manuscript acquired (don’t ask how) by the Swedish vice-consul in Alexandria in 1828, is one of the richest sources of knowledge about the alchemical arts in antiquity. Thought to have been written around 300AD, it contains recipes for making dyes and preparing gemstones, pearls and metals. The papyrus offers the first inkling that some alchemical transformations were about deception. One recipe, for example, tells how to ‘give objects of copper the appearan