The translation presented here of the Muaf aÆ-Æuwar (The Book of Pictures) into English is its first translation into a European language by Salwa Fuad and Theodor Abt. It is the result of careful, repeated distillation work over a period of twenty years, encouraged by Dr von Franz. The text is a dialogue between the teacher Zosimos and his beloved student Theosebeia, explaining to her the symbolic meaning of the alchemical work. The unique contribution of this text is the 42 pictures that Zosimos has drawn for Theosebeia. These pictures are, as is demonstrated in the introduction written by Theodor Abt, the earliest alchemical pictures known and they are the source to the picture series given in the Rosarium and the Mutus Liber I. The whole dialogue is the earliest known psychological dialogue concerning transference and counter-transference.

Theodor Abt (b. 1947) Jungian Analyst in private practice. 1983-88 member of the board of the C.G. Jung-Institute, Professor for Rural Sociology at the ETH. Since 1995, member of the board of the Research and Training Centre for Depth Psychology according to C.G. Jung and M.-L. von Franz, Zurich. Since 1988, President of the Society of the Friends of the Royal Tombs of Egypt. Author of: Progress without Loss of Soul (1990).