From the ‘cocaine mummies‘ to the blue water lily, the use of drugs in ancient Egypt has been a topic of much discussion – although often based on controversial evidence or folklore and hearsay. A recent study, however, suggests that usage of one particular drug was more common in ancient Egyptian culture than previously thought: opium.
In a paper published in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies titled “The Pharmacopeia of Ancient Egyptian Alabaster Vessels: A Transdisciplinary Approach with Legacy Artifacts“, researchers detailed how they used a technique called organic residue analysis (ORA) to extract microscopic chemical traces from the stone of a 2,500-year-old alabaster vase-like vessel, known as an alabastron.
This particular alabastron has been part of the Yale Peabody Museum’s Babylonian Collection for over a century, and is inscribed with the name of the Persian King Xerxes I in four different languages (Akkadian, Elamite, Persian, Egyptian).
The scholarly consensus has been that alabastra were originally manufactured in Egypt before making their way around the Mediterranean (possibly as gifts to high-ranking officials or royalty), and that they were generally used to hold cosmetics or perfumes. However, the results of the chemical analysis of this particular vessel were conclusive: Researchers found definitive evidence of noscapine, hydrocotarnine, morphine, thebaine, and papaverine – well-known diagnostic biomarkers for opium.
It was already known that opium was used in ancient Egypt: Vessels from a tomb at the New Kingdom archaeological site of Sedment, roughly a thousand years older than this alabastron, have been confirmed to have contained opium, and there have been other lines of evidence – textual, archaeological and visual – suggestive of its usage. On the basis of this previous evidence, and the newly confirmed results from the alabastron, researchers are now saying that it is “abundantly clear …that opiate use was more than accidental or sporadic, and to some degree a fixture of ancient daily life adopted into diverse groups including those considered less than elite.”
There is now enough evidence to suggest that at least some types of Egyptian alabaster vessels had a direct cultural connection with opiate storage, preparation, and consumption beyond a more general utilization of calcite, reflecting a broader horizon of pharmacopeic traditions across the ancient world still poorly understood today. Egyptian alabaster vessels have now been found with clear opiate chemical signatures attached to elite societies outside of Egypt proper (i.e., Mesopotamia) and embedded in more ordinary cultural circumstances within Egypt (i.e., Sedment)…
…We must now consider the possibility of a much more complex and pervasive incidence of opiate use in antiquity, which casts new light on past discoveries and naturally encourages a reassessment of prior conclusions related to Egyptian alabaster vessels.
King Tut: Dope fiend?
Based on this possibility, researchers have been moved to wonder whether there should be a reappraisal of perhaps the most prominent set of Egyptian alabaster vessels so far discovered: a large number of alabastra found in KV62 in the Valley of the Kings – the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun (d. 1323 BCE).
In 1922, competing for attention among the more glamorous treasures of Tutankhamun that largely submerged an awareness of their existence, Howard Carter found a vast quantity of Egyptian alabaster vessels that likely mark the apex of their grandeur in ancient society, at least based on the evidence we have uncovered to this point. Our present study can help recontextualize these vessels, providing another lens of interpretation, especially in comparison to the early attempts at chemical study by Alfred Lucas in 1933 of these large, elaborate, and exquisitely preserved examples from the tomb of Tutankhamun.
These vessels were in many cases apparently filled with the same sticky, dark brown organics that could not be chemically identified by Lucas at the time, except to rule out unguents and perfumes for the most part, though they clearly had a distinct odor. This is where the scholarly deliberations have largely stood for a century.
The researchers also note a curious aspect of the two lootings that occurred not long after Tut’s entombment: There was an initial looting incident that was more of a “smash and grab” of portable precious metals; but then a second one that seemed to focus specifically on the contents of these vessels. “This latter disturbance,” they note, “was more carefully planned and executed…with the second cohort of looters methodically transferring the precious organic contents into portable bags as evidenced by finger marks inside the calcite vessels from efforts to scrape out their contents by hand down to the dregs and some of the leather swag bags somehow getting left behind in the descending entrance passage during the getaway.”
A few of these jars were never looted, however, and to this day remain filled with their original organic contents. The researchers of this new study therefore suggest analyzing their contents to check whether the substance in them is indeed opium. “It surprises that the possibility of opiates has never been officially proposed,” they say, “perhaps owing to taboos of a bygone era that persist to some degree today in conjunction with the notoriously tricky task of isolating opiate biomarkers with a high degree of certainty.”
“Analyzing the contents of the jars from King Tut’s tomb would further clarify the role of opium in these ancient societies.”
(For more on the use of drugs like opium in ancient societies, be sure to read Paul Devereux’s The Long Trip: A prehistory of psychedelia.)
