https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/11/ancient-egyptians-likely-used-opiates-regularly/
Scientists have found traces of ancient opiates in the residue lining an Egyptian alabaster vase, indicating that opiate use was woven into the fabric of the culture. And the Egyptians didn't just indulge occasionally: according to a paper published in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology, opiate use may have been a fixture of daily life.
In recent years, archaeologists have been applying the tools of pharmacology to excavated artifacts in collections around the world. As previously reported, there is ample evidence that humans in many cultures throughout history used various hallucinogenic substances in religious ceremonies or shamanic rituals. That includes not just ancient Egypt but also ancient Greek, Vedic, Maya, Inca, and Aztec cultures. The Urarina people who live in the Peruvian Amazon Basin still use a psychoactive brew called ayahuasca in their rituals, and Westerners seeking their own brand of enlightenment have also been known to participate.
For instance, in 2023, David Tanasi, of the University of South Florida, posted a preprint on his preliminary analysis of a ceremonial mug decorated with the head of Bes, a popular deity believed to confer protection on households, especially mothers and children. After collecting sample residues from the vessel, Tanasi applied various techniques—including proteomic and genetic analyses and synchrotron radiation-based Fourier-transform infrared microspectroscopy—to characterize the residues.
Tanasi found traces of Syrian rue, whose seeds are known to have hallucinogenic properties that can induce dream-like visions, per the authors, thanks to its production of the alkaloids harmine and harmaline. There were also traces of blue water lily, which contains a psychoactive alkaloid that acts as a sedative, as well as a fermented alcoholic concoction containing yeasts, wheat, sesame seeds, fruit (possibly grapes), honey, and, um, "human fluids": possibly breast milk, oral or vaginal mucus, and blood. A follow-up 2024 study confirmed those results and also found traces of pine nuts or Mediterranean pine oil; licorice; tartaric acid salts that were likely part of the aforementioned alcoholic concoction; and traces of spider flowers known to have medicinal properties.
Now we can add opiates to the list of pharmacological substances used by the ancient Egyptians. The authors of this latest paper focused on one alabaster vase in particular, housed in the Yale Peabody Museum's Babylonian Collection. The vase is intact—a rare find—and is inscribed in four ancient languages and mentions Xerxes I, who reigned over the Achaemenid Empire from 486 to 465 BCE. The authors were particularly intrigued by the presence of a dark-brown residue inside the vase.
Past scholars had speculated the vases most likely held cosmetics or perfumes, or perhaps hidden messages between the king and his officials. Yet there are also several known pharmacopeia recipes contained in such works as the Anicia Juliana Codex of De materia medica by Dioscorides. The current authors analyzed residue samples with nondestructive techniques, namely portable X-ray fluorescence XRF (pXRF) and passive Fourier Transform Infrared (pFTIR) spectroscopy.
The result: distinct traces of several biomarkers for opium, such as noscapine, hydrocotarnine, morphine, thebaine, and papaverine. That's consistent with an earlier identification of opiate residues found in several Egyptian alabaster vessels and Cypriot juglets excavated from a merchant's tomb south of Cairo, dating back to the New Kingdom (16th to 11th century BCE).
The authors think these twin findings warrant a reassessment of prior assumptions about Egyptian alabaster vessels, many of which they believe could also have traces of ancient opiates. A good starting point, they suggest, is a set of vessels excavated from Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter. Many of those vessels have the same sticky dark brown organic residues. There was an early attempt to chemically analyze those residues in 1933 by Albert Lucas, who simply didn't have the necessary technology to identify the compounds, although he was able to determine that the residues were not unguents or perfumes. Nobody has attempted to analyze the residues since.
Additional evidence of the value of the residues lies in the fact that looters didn't engage in the usual "smash and grab" practices employed to collect precious metals when it came to the alabaster vessels. Instead, looters transferred the organic stuff into portable bags; there are still finger marks inside many of the vessels, as well as remnants of the leather bags used to collect the organics.
"It remains imminently possible, if not probable, that at least some of the vast remaining bulk of calcite vessels... in fact contained opiates as part of a long-lived Egyptian tradition we are only beginning to understand," the authors concluded. Looters missed a few of the vessels, which still contain their original organic contents, making them ideal candidates for future analysis.
"We now have found opiate chemical signatures that Egyptian alabaster vessels attached to elite societies in Mesopotamia and embedded in more ordinary cultural circumstances within ancient Egypt," said co-author Andrew Koh of the Yale Peabody Museum. "It's possible these vessels were easily recognizable cultural markers for opium use in ancient times, just as hookahs today are attached to shisha tobacco consumption. Analyzing the contents of the jars from King Tut's tomb would further clarify the role of opium in these ancient societies."
DOI: Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology, 2025. 10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.13.3.0317 (About DOIs).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Frosty Piss on Sunday November 23, @04:36PM (1 child)
The magic of poppies were well known to the Romans, and the flower certainly didn't originate in Italy. Like the Romans, the Egyptians traded extensively with the very regions where poppies flourish today
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Sunday November 23, @08:53PM
This is far before the Romans, but the Crete imagery also indicates the use of opium. It probably dates back as far, or nearly as far, as humanity.
The peculiar question is "Why would anyone have doubted that the ancient Egyptians used opium?".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23, @06:02PM
Coca and opium are as fundamental to the human diet as beans, squash, and maize
Drugs make life tolerable. Even the animals know that.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday November 23, @06:21PM
Upon reading this, the Egyptian religion suddenly seems more explicable. (It was so sudden, it's what I imagine a drug high could feel like.) Animal heads on human bodies does seem like the sort of thing a person on hallucinogens would see.
We should remember the ancients and primitives generally put a lot of stock in this sort of thing, this idea that consciousness and mind altering methods are a means of connecting with the supernatural. The Oracle of Delphi, for instance.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by istartedi on Sunday November 23, @06:43PM (2 children)
There's some theory that drugs aren't really a problem when society accommodates them properly. A lot of people would imagine that Egypt would have a lot of people sleeping by the side of the road, getting carted off to the ancient equivalent of rehab, or building pyramids on work release. It may not have been so at all, and I've never heard any ancient sources talking about the equivalent of our law-based enforcement of a drug law.
How does that work? I think there must have been some strong social taboos about when, where, and how often you used such things. Maybe a priest was the arbiter of when you could use. Maybe there were ceremonies involved. Regardless of how it was done, I think there might have been some social pressure capable of over-riding addiction motives. When use is acceptable in certain contexts, you don't cross over in to a subculture where you're an outcast and find no relief from emotional pain except by excessive use.
It's also possible that hard drugs were only available via trade and thus expensive. That would have limited their use to the elites, who could have had serious abuse problems but it would have been hidden and not well documented. That would be effectively "legalize and tax", but possibly with a class distinction that kept lower classes from becoming addicts.
I'm sure it wasn't perfect; but it's possible it might have been better.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by driverless on Monday November 24, @04:23AM (1 child)
You can see an example of this with one of the most commonly-used drugs, ethanol. Compare the drinking culture of France, a glass or two of wine for your apéro, with drinking culture next door in the UK, "orright, let's get shit-faced!".
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25, @12:42PM
I can understand drinking because you like the taste of the stuff.
I can also understand drinking if you get high.
But if hugging a toilet bowl for hours while puking, week after week is a highlight of your life then you're doing lots of things wrong.
Puking in the toilet for hours is not a particularly sociable thing to do either. So that's not really social drinking.
And there's that hangover thing that some get.
I do drink and enjoy beer, whisky, rum, wine etc but I've never drunk enough to get a hangover. I've drunk enough to get drunk. In my opinion if you regularly suffer that much for your hobby then you're like some incompetent mountain climber who keeps falling and injuring himself, or worse needs to be rescued by paramedics.