‘Alchemy in the Making: From Ancient Babylonia via Graeco-Roman Egypt into the Byzantine, Syriac and Arabic Traditions (1500 Bce–1000 AD)’ (AlchemEast) is a new research initiative funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Consolidator Grant 2017–2022, Grant Agreement 724914, PI Matteo Martelli) and based at the University of Bologna. The project casts its look to the East and back in time―on the two and a half millennia that precede the conventional Mediaeval origins of alchemy―in order to tell the unknown story of alchemy and its practice. To investigate this millennium-old tradition, AlchemEast explores Babylonian proto-alchemy, the origins of this discipline in Graeco-Roman Egypt, its dissemination in Byzantium, and the different forms of the Syriac and Arabic reception―with a focus on primary sources and their manuscript tradition.