# Emerald Bench *The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 19 Sep 2010* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Andrew Mason *19 Sep 2010, 17:54* At the end of BOTNS, when Severian enters the Autarch's apartment, he finds a laboratory containing, among other things, 'the fabled emerald bench'. Does anyone have any idea what this might be? --- ### Jeff Wilson *19 Sep 2010, 19:17 · in reply to Andrew Mason* > On 9/19/2010 12:54 PM, Andrew Mason wrote: > At the end of BOTNS, when Severian enters the Autarch's apartment, he > finds a laboratory containing, among other things, 'the fabled emerald > bench'. Does anyone have any idea what this might be? Probably a reference to the Emerald Tablet aka the Emerald Table, upon which is graven the undoubtable truths of alchemy including the formula for gold, the Philosopher's Stone, the care and feeding of homunculi and mandragoras, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Tablet ``` Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > ``` --- ### Lee Berman *20 Sep 2010, 11:15 · follows Jeff Wilson* > Jeff Wilson: Probably a reference to the Emerald Tablet aka the Emerald Table, upon > which is graven the undoubtable truths of alchemy including the formula for gold, the > Philosopher's Stone, the care and feeding of homunculi and mandragoras, etc. Okay! good work you guys. > Wikipedia- The Emerald Tablet, also known as Smaragdine Table, Tabula Smaragdina, or The > Secret of Hermes, is a text purporting to reveal the secret of the primordial substance and > its transmutations. It claims to be the work of Hermes Trismegistus ("Hermes the Thrice- > Greatest"), a legendary Hellenistic[1] combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian > god Thoth. I like the part about sometimes baboon-headed Thoth. ---