The Emerald Tablet, also known as the Smaragdine Table or the Tabula Smaragdina, is a compact and cryptic text traditionally attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus. The earliest known versions are four Arabic recensions preserved in mystical and alchemical treatises between the 8th and 10th centuries CE—chiefly the Secret of Creation (Arabic: سر الخليقة, romanized: Sirr al-Khalīqa) and the Secret of Secrets (سرّ الأسرار, Sirr al-Asrār). It was often accompanied by a frame story about the discovery of an emerald tablet in Hermes' tomb.

From the 12th century onward, Latin translations—most notably the widespread so-called vulgate—introduced the text to Europe, where it attracted great scholarly interest. Medieval commentators such as Hortulanus interpreted it as a "foundational text" of alchemical instructions for producing the philosopher's stone and making gold. During the Renaissance, interpreters increasingly read the text through Neoplatonic, allegorical, and Christian lenses; and printers often paired it with an emblem that came to be regarded as a visual representation of the Tablet itself. Vernacular translations of the Latin vulgate also started to appear, such as an English translation prepared by Isaac Newton.

Following the 20th-century rediscovery of Arabic sources by Eric Holmyard and Julius Ruska, modern scholars continue to debate its origins. They agree that the Secret of Creation, the Tablet's earliest source and its likely original context, was either wholly or at least partly compiled from earlier Greek or Syriac materials. The Tablet remains influential in esotericism and occultism, where the phrase as above, so below (a paraphrase of its second verse) has become a popular maxim. It has also been taken up by Jungian psychologists, artists, and figures of pop culture, cementing its status as one of the best-known Hermetica.

Beginning from the first century BCE onwards, Greek texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, appeared in Greco-Roman Egypt. These texts, known as the Hermetica, are a heterogeneous collection of works that in the modern day are commonly subdivided into two groups: the technical Hermetica, comprising astrological, medico-botanical, alchemical, and magical writings; and the religio-philosophical Hermetica, comprising mystical-philosophical writings.

These Greek pseudepigraphal texts found receptions, translations, and imitations in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and Middle Persian prior to the emergence of Islam and the Arab conquests in the 630s. These conquests brought about various empires in which a new group of Arabic-speaking intellectuals emerged. These scholars received and translated the aforementioned wealth of texts and also began producing Hermetica of their own. By the tenth century, some Arabic-speaking Muslims had come to identify Hermes with the prophet Idris, thereby elevating the Hermetica to the level of other Islamic prophetic revelations. Until the early twentieth century, only Latin versions of the Emerald Tablet were known in the Western world, with the oldest dating back to the twelfth century. The older (eighth-/ninth-century and later) Arabic versions were rediscovered by Eric John Holmyard and Julius Ruska.

The oldest version of the Emerald Tablet is found as an appendix in an encyclopaedic treatise on natural philosophy meant as a cosmogony. It is believed to have been compiled in Arabic in the late eighth or early ninth century. The treatise bears the title Book of the Secret of Creation and the Craft of Nature. Some scholars consider it plausible that this work is a translation of a much older Greek or Syriac original, although no such manuscript is known. At the same time others think it is more likely that it was an original Arabic composition based on older materials. The Arabic text presents itself as a translation of a work by Apollonius of Tyana. Pseudepigraphal attributions to Apollonius were common in medieval Arabic texts on magic, astrology, and alchemy. If the Tablet originally hailed from a pseudo-Apollonian context, it could be considered a text of late antiquity, like other such works.

This earliest known version reads as follows:

حقٌّ لا شكَّ فيه صَحيح،
إنّ الأعلى من الأسفل والأسفل من الأعلى،
عمل العجائب من واحد كما كانت الأشياء كلّها من واحد بتدبير واحد،
أبوه الشمس، أُمّه القمر،
حملته الريح في بطنها، غذته الأرض،
أبو الطِّلسمات، خازن العجائب، كامل القوى،
نار صارت أرضاً ٱعزِل الأرض من النار،
اللطيف أكرم من الغليظ،
برِفق وحُكم يصعد من الأرض إلى السماء وينزل إلى الأرض من السماء،
وفيه قُوّة الأعلى والأسفل،
لأنّ معه نور الأنوار فلذلك تهرب منه الظُّلمة،
قُوّة القوى
يغلب كلّ شيء لطيف، يدخل في كلّ شيء غليظ،
على تكوين العالَم الأكبر تكوّن العمل،
فهذا فَخْرِي ولذلك سُمّيتُ هرمس المثلَّث بالحكمة.