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Researchers have found evidence of a hallucinogenic ritual that may have helped ancient Egyptians reenact a mythical story in which a dwarf god tricks the sky goddess.
In a paper published Nov. 13 in the journal Scientific Reports, the team reports finding the remains of a concoction that may have induced hallucinations in those who drank it. They found the remains inside a 2,200-year-old vase that shows Bes, an ancient Egyptian dwarf god associated with childbirth, merriment and music.
The team conducted chemical analyses of organic residues inside the vase, revealing traces of wild rue (Peganum harmala), Egyptian lotus (Nymphaea nouchali var. caerulea), and a plant of the Cleome genus, all of which are traditionally shown to have "psychotropic and medicinal properties," the team wrote in their paper. They also detected the remains of sesame seeds, pine nuts, licorice and grapes — a combination that was "commonly used to make the beverage look like blood," the team said in a statement.
The researchers also detected the remains of human bodily fluids such as saliva and blood, suggesting that people drank the concoction. It's possible that the human fluid was inserted as an ingredient into the concoction, the team said in the paper.
The team used a variety of techniques to identify the ingredients in the concoction, whose residues were left on the vase. These methods included the extraction of ancient DNA, as well as fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, a technique that uses infrared light to determine what a compound is made of.
These finds make the team think that people in ancient Egypt were trying to recreate the "Myth of the Solar Eye." In the story, Bes calmed Hathor, a sky goddess associated with fertility, when she was in a bloodthirsty mood by "serving her an alcoholic beverage, spiked with a plant-based drug, disguised as blood to a deep forgetting sleep," the team wrote in the paper.
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"It would be possible to infer that this Bes-vase was used for some sort of ritual of reenactment of what happened in a significant event in Egyptian myth," the team wrote.
The portable 3D scanner next to the ancient Egyptian vase of Bes.
(Image credit: Cassidy Delamarter)
It's also possible that the hallucinogenic drink was used by people who were trying to predict the future. "A ritual linked to the cult of Bes during the Greco-Roman periods involved the practice of incubation for oracular purposes, in which the consultants slept in the Bes-Chambers at Saqqara to obtain prophetic dreams," the team wrote. Bes was associated with childbirth, and women may have gone to the oracles to seek predictions of how their pregnancies would turn out.
"Egyptologists believe that people visited the so-called Bes Chambers at Saqqara when they wished to confirm a successful pregnancy because pregnancies in the ancient world were fraught with dangers," Branko van Oppen, curator of Greek and Roman art at the Tampa Museum of Art and co-author of the paper, said in the statement. "So, this combination of ingredients may have been used in a dream-vision inducing magic ritual within the context of this dangerous period of childbirth."
The vessel is housed in the Tampa Museum of Art. In 1984, the museum acquired it from a private collector, who had purchased it from the Maguid Sameda Art Gallery in Cairo in 1960. Where it was originally found is not clear.
Owen Jarus is a regular contributor to Live Science who writes about archaeology and humans' past. He has also written for The Independent (UK), The Canadian Press (CP) and The Associated Press (AP), among others. Owen has a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Toronto and a journalism degree from Ryerson University.
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