2,000-year-old vase reveals ancient Egyptian secret

Archaeological discovery reveals that ancient Egyptians used hallucinogenic drinks in secret rituals, with human fluids and psychoactive plants!

A 2,200-year-old ceramic container has confirmed what archaeologists have long suspected: Some ancient Egyptians were consuming hallucinogens.

For the first time, scientists have discovered organic residues of psychedelic plants in an ancient Egyptian artifact that, in times past, likely contained an alcoholic, hallucinogenic drink made with a fruit sedative, sweetened with honey, possibly tasting like licorice, and intentionally mixed with fluids. humans.

The alcoholic and hallucinogenic cocktail was probably consumed in the name of the god Bes, whose face is present on the outside of the container.

“There is no research that has found what we found in this study,” says archaeologist Davide Tanasi, from the University of South Florida.

Bes was an Egyptian deity of music, joy and childbirth, sometimes known as the “giver of dreams/oracles”. Scientists have unearthed more than 380 Bes vessels from ancient Egyptian civilization, but it’s still a mystery what these drinking vessels contained and why they were used.

“For a long time, Egyptologists have speculated about what the cups with the head of Bes might have been used for, and for what kind of drink, such as holy water, milk, wine or beer,” explains Branko van Oppen, curator of Greek art. and Roman at the Tampa Museum of Art.

“Experts did not know whether these cups were used in everyday life, for religious purposes or in magical rituals.”

The container found with traces of hallucinogenic plants may not be representative of all Bes vessels, but it certainly offers insight. It was donated to the Tampa Museum of Art in 1984 and recently studied by a team of scientists from the US and Italy.

The jar contains evidence of three plants with known hallucinogenic properties.

The first is the blue lotus flower (Nymphaea nouchali) — a psychoactive plant with which Bes is often depicted emerging. This flower also appears on several other Bes vases.

The second psychoactive plant is called Syrian rue (Peganum harmala). The seeds of this plant, sometimes known as African rue, are sedatives that have hallucinogenic properties when consumed in small quantities, inducing dreamlike visions very similar to those described in ancient myths about Bes.

In one such myth, for example, Bes prevents the wrath of a bloodthirsty goddess by serving her an intoxicated drink. Drinking makes her sleep soundly.

The third plant belongs to the genus Cleome, which has also been found to induce hallucinations.

The Bes vase, kept at the Tampa museum, was originally found in a region of Egypt south of what is now Cairo, and is tentatively dated to the second century B.C.

During this period, a nearby Egyptian city was home to the so-called “Chambers of Bes,” where mysterious rituals were performed.

Several human proteins identified in the waste suggest “a deliberate addition of human fluids to the drink prepared for ritual purposes,” the researchers write.

“This includes fluids such as breast milk, mucous secretions (oral or vaginal) and blood.”

Perhaps these rituals involved ingesting a sedative. The inclusion of human fluids may have helped personalize the spiritual experience.

“Egyptologists believe that people visited the so-called Chambers of Bes in Saqqara when they wanted to confirm a successful pregnancy, as pregnancies in the ancient world were fraught with danger,” explains Van Oppen.

“So this combination of ingredients may have been used in a magical ritual induced by dream visions in the context of this dangerous period of childbirth.”

The researchers hope that more Bes vessels will be analyzed in a similar way. Only then will we understand how often hallucinogenic cocktails were consumed in ancient Egypt and why.

“With this study, we have found scientific proof that Egyptian myths have some kind of truth and this helps us clarify the little-understood rituals that were likely performed in the Chambers of Bes in Saqqara, near the Great Pyramids of Giza,” says Tanasi.

The study was published in Nature.