Alabaster vase residue points to widespread use

Examination of an ancient alabaster vase in the Yale Peabody Museum’s Babylonian collection revealed traces of opiates, providing the clearest evidence yet of widespread opium use in ancient Egyptian society, according to a new study from the Yale Ancient Pharmacology Program (YAPP).

The discovery suggests that similar ancient Egyptian alabaster vessels, all made from calcite mined from the same quarries in Egypt, including several exquisite examples discovered in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, may also contain traces of ancient opiates, said Andrew J. Koh, YAPP principal investigator and lead author of the study.

“Our results, combined with previous research, indicate that opium use was more than accidental or sporadic in ancient Egyptian cultures and the surrounding lands and was, to some extent, an integral part of daily life,” said Koh, a research scientist at the Yale Peabody Museum. “We believe it is possible, even likely, that the alabaster pots found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb contained opium, part of an ancient tradition of opiate use that we are only now beginning to understand.”

The study, published in the Journal of Archeology and Heritage Studies of the Eastern Mediterraneanis co-authored by Agnete W. Lassen, associate curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection, and Alison M. Crandall, YAPP laboratory director.

The alabaster vase is inscribed in four ancient languages ​​– Akkadian, Elamite, Persian and Egyptian – in honor of Xerxes I, who ruled the Achaemenid Empire from 486 to 465 BCE. Based in Persia, the empire at its height included Egypt as well as Mesopotamia, the Levant, Anatolia, and parts of eastern Arabia and central Asia.

A second inscription on the vase, written in demotic script, a simplified form of ancient Egyptian writing, indicates that it has a capacity of approximately 1,200 millimeters. (It stands 22 centimeters tall.) Intact examples of inscribed ancient Egyptian alabaster vessels are exceptionally rare, with probably fewer than 10 in collections worldwide, the researchers noted.

Rare alabaster vases and their history

The provenances of the intact vessels are generally unknown, the researchers said, but they cover at least the reigns of the Achaemenid emperors Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes, a period spanning 550 to 425 BCE. The Yale Vase became part of the Babylonian Collection shortly after the assemblage of approximately 40,000 ancient objects was created at the university in 1911.

Based at the Peabody Museum, YAPP leverages ethnography, science, and technology to better understand how people lived thousands of years ago. Its researchers study organic residues found on or in ancient vessels, providing insight into the diet and lifestyle of ancient people. The program has developed specific methods to analyze organic residues – which degrade and decompose over time and are susceptible to contamination – found in artifacts in museum collections or in those recently excavated.

“Scholars tend to study and admire ancient vessels for their aesthetic qualities, but our program focuses on how they were used and the organic substances they contained, knowledge that reveals much about the daily lives of ancient people, including what they ate, the medicines they used and how they spent their free time,” Koh said.

Discovery of opiate residues and implications

For the new study, Koh’s interest was initially piqued after observing dark brown aromatic residue inside the vase. Residue analysis by YAPP revealed definitive evidence for the presence of noscapine, hydrocotarnine, morphine, thebaine, and papaverine, well-known diagnostic biomarkers of opium.

Researchers say the findings echo the discovery of opiate residue in a group of Egyptian alabaster vessels and Cypriot base ring juglets found in an ordinary tomb, likely that of a merchant family, in Sedment, Egypt, located south of Cairo, which dates to the New Kingdom, the Egyptian empire that spanned the 16th to 11th centuries BCE.

The two discoveries, which span a millennium and concern socio-economic groups, raise the possibility that opium was present among the large quantity of alabaster vessels found in Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Koh said.

There are clear signs of opium use extending beyond medical use and into the spiritual realm throughout antiquity, stretching from ancient Mesopotamia to Egypt and across the Aegean Sea, he said. During Tutankhamun’s lifetime, for example, the inhabitants of Crete were associated with the so-called “poppy goddess” in clearly ritual contexts. The poppy plant is mentioned in several ancient texts, notably the Papyrus of Ebers, Hippocrates, Dioscorides. materia medicaand Galen.

Tomb of King Tutankhamun and ancient opium

The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Egyptologist and archaeologist Howard Carter in November 1922 revealed an enormous collection of artifacts, including a large number of superbly preserved Egyptian alabaster vessels that represented probably the finest available during Tutankhamun’s reign, which lasted from 1,333 to 1,323 BCE.

In 1933, analytical chemist Alfred Lucas, a member of Carter’s research team, carried out a superficial chemical study of the containers, many of which contained sticky, dark brown, aromatic organic materials. At the time, Lucas was unable to chemically identify organic materials, but he determined that most were not ointments or perfumes.

“The fact that Lucas questioned whether any of the containers contained perfumes or ointments and did not identify the remaining contents of the container as being primarily aromatic in nature is significant given that the conventions of the time would have led him to do so,” Koh said.

No further analysis of organic materials has been conducted since Lucas’s first attempts. The vessels, along with most other objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb, are housed in the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, Egypt.

Looting, beliefs about life after death, and cultural significance

After his historic discovery, Carter noted an ancient incident of looting targeting the contents of the alabaster vessels, the researchers said. Fingerprints found inside the ships suggest that the looters had attempted to meticulously scrape their contents down to the dregs. Many of the looted containers contained the same dark brown aromatic substances that Lucas said were not perfumes, the researchers note. A few ships have not been looted and remain filled with their original contents.

These contents, whatever they were, were considered important enough to accompany Tutankhamun into the afterlife and entice tomb robbers to risk their lives in an attempted theft, Koh said.

It is unlikely, he added, that ancient peoples would have placed such value on the standard ointments and perfumes of the day.

“We have now found opiate chemical signatures that show that Egyptian alabaster vessels were attached to elite societies in Mesopotamia and rooted in more ordinary cultural circumstances within ancient Egypt,” Koh said. “It is possible that these vessels are easily recognizable cultural markers of opium consumption in ancient times, just as hookahs are linked to shisha tobacco consumption today. Analyzing the contents of the pots from the tomb of King Tutankhamun would further clarify the role of opium in these ancient societies.”