As early as 3500 years ago, people in the Middle East consumed the intoxicant opium and imported the drug for it. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of this in Bronze Age tombs near Tel Aviv. In the residues of several ceramic vessels from these graves, they found not only vegetable oils but also opioid alkaloids. This suggests that people at that time used opium as part of rituals and gave it to their dead to take with them into the afterlife.
Intoxicating drugs have a long tradition in human history: 5000 years ago, Sumerian cuneiform tablets described the cultivation of opium poppy and described the opium obtained from it as "gil", which means happiness. It is said that the Assyrians used special iron scrapers to scrape off the opium-containing poppy seed juice from the ripe poppy seed pods. Opium poppies were also cultivated in ancient Egypt, although the use of the opium obtained from them in cultic rites was reserved for an elite group of priests and warriors. From Asia Minor, opium found its way to Greece and Rome in ancient times.
Bronze Age tombs with imported pottery
But although there are many textual references to the use of opium, especially in the context of ceremonies and religious rituals in these early cultures, archaeological evidence for this has so far been scarce. Findings made by archaeologists around Vanessa Linares from Tel Aviv University in Tel Yehud near the city of Tel Aviv are all the more exciting. Because a settlement was to be built there, the team carried out a rescue excavation. In their course, they discovered hundreds of graves from the late Bronze Age there. The graves date from the 18th to 14th century BC and contained grave goods in the form of ceramic vessels, among other things.
"Ceramic vessels placed in the tombs were used for ceremonial meals, rites and rituals performed by the living for their dead family members," explains Ron Be'eri of the Israel Archeology Authority. "The dead were honored with food and drink, either placed directly into the vessels or consumed at a feast at the grave, at which the dead were considered to be celebrants." Some of the funerary offering vessels discovered at Tel Yehud, however, were not ceramics of local design, but so-called base ring vessels from Cyprus. Resembling an upside-down opium poppy, these small, bulbous ceramic vessels have long been suspected of having served as containers for opium.
Opium at the grave of the deceased
For their study, Linares and her team brought 22 ceramic vessels from the Tel Yehud Bronze Age tombs to the laboratory and took samples from the inner vessel walls. They then subjected these samples to chemical analysis using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) in hopes of finding residues of the contents. The analyzes showed that eight of the base ring vessels found in the graves contained not only residues of vegetable oils, waxes and other organic compounds but also opioid alkaloids, including opianic acid, morphine and other opium degradation compounds.
According to the archaeologists, this suggests that opium was once contained in these vessels. The approximately 3,500-year-old burial vessels from Tel Yehud are the oldest clear evidence of the use of opium in the world, as the team explains. At the same time, this is also the oldest archaeological evidence of the use of hallucinogenic drugs at all. Linares and her colleagues suspect that opium was used in funeral rites at Tel Yehud. "However, we do not know what the exact function of opium was in these funeral ceremonies: the Canaanites of Tel Yehud may have believed that the dead needed opium in the afterlife," says Linares. But it is also conceivable that the priests consumed the drug during the death ritual because they believed they could contact the spirits of the dead in this way.
The detection of opium residues in Bronze Age vessels sheds new light on burial rituals in ancient Canaan and on the role of opium in late Bronze Age cultures. At the same time, the discovery of opium vessels from Cyprus also underlines that this drug must have been traded as a valuable commodity over long distances. "You have to remember that the opium was made from opium poppies, which grew in Asia Minor at the time, while the vessels in the tombs came from Cyprus," says Linares. "The opium therefore reached Canaan via several stations - this underlines the great importance that was attached to this drug at the time."
Source: Tel Aviv University; Article: Archaeometry, doi: 10.1111/arcm.12806