Legend places its origin in the tomb of Hermes Trismegistus himself, a single tablet of emerald engraved with the whole of natural law compressed into a dozen lines.

It surfaces first in Arabic sources, passes into Latin through medieval translators, and from there into the hands of friars, philosophers, and scientists. By the time it reached Isaac Newton's writing desk, it had already been copied and re-copied for the better part of a millennium.

This edition gathers six of those translations, made across seven centuries, and lets them sit side by side.