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Originally posted by Herukhuti:
Well did they?

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Posts: 4597 | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by GambA:
coke...

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Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by MY NAME IS NO MORE .....,:

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Originally posted by Herukhuti:
Well did they?

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they inhaled come type of glue if i can recall in ahistory book ,and someting to do with the embalming fluid has well ,got to look for that ....

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Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Herukhuti:

After MANY years of introspective deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that everyone (adults over 21) needs something they do; something they retire to as a means of relaxation/pleasure/euphoria. For some people it's the crackhouse/church , for some it's their religion, drugs, 'EgyptSearch.com , some other 'community' website or sex. Everybody needs something for distraction... what did the Egyptians use, philosophy? meditation?

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Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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The Mystery of the Cocaine Mummies

... four years ago a German scientist, Dr Svetla Balabanova, made a discovery which was to baffle Egyptologists, and call into question whole areas of science and archeology to chemistry and botany.

She discovered that the body of Henut Taui contained large quantities of cocaine and nicotine. The surprise was not just that the ancient Egyptians had taken drugs, but that these drugs come from tobacco and coca, plants completly unknown outside the Americas, unheard of until Sir Walter Raleigh introduced smoking from the New World, or until cocaine was imported in the Victorian era.

It was seemingly impossible for the ancient Egyptians to get hold of these substances. And so began the mystery -

The mystery of the cocaine mummies.

It was in Munich, in 1992, that researchers began a huge project to investigate the contents of mummies. When as part of their studies, they wanted to test for drugs, it was no surprise that they turned to toxicologist Dr Svelta Balabanova for help.

As the inventor of groundbreaking new methods for the detection of drugs in hair and sweat, she was highly respected in her field. Dr Balabanova took samples from the mummies, which she pulverised and dissolved to make a solution. As she'd done countless times before, she ran the samples through a system which uses antibodies to detect the presence of drugs an other substances. Then as a backup the samples were put through the GCMS machine which can accurately identify substances by determining their molecular weight. As the graph emerged with peaks showing that drugs were present, and as the printer spewed out the analysis of just which drugs, something seemed to have gone very wrong.

DR SVETLA BALABANOVA - Institute of Forensic Medicine, Ulm:
"The first positive results, of course, were a shock for me. I had not expected to find nicotine and cocaine but that's what happened. I was absolutely sure it must be a mistake."

NARRATOR:
Balabanova ran the tests again. She sent fresh samples to three other labs. But the results kept being confirmed. The drugs were there. So she went ahead and published a paper. The reaction was a sharp reminder that science is a conservative world.

DR SVETLA BALABANOVA - Institute of Forensic Medicine, Ulm:
"I got a pile of letters that were almost threatening, insulting letters saying it was nonsense, that I was fantasising, that it was impossible, because it was proven that before Columbus these plants were not found anywhere in the world outside of the Americas."

NARRATOR:
From toxicologists to anthropologists - everyone thought the same.

. . . .

Yet Balabanova herself had been worried about contamination. First she checked all the lab equipment. But being a forensic toxicologist, that wasn't all she did. Balabanova had learned her trade from working for the police, and had been trained in the methods they use for investigating a suspicious death. She'd been taught how vital it is when an autopsy is carried out to know wether the victim has consumed or been given any drugs or poisons. And she had also been taught that a special forensic technique exists which can show that the deceased has consumed a drug and rule out contamination at the same time.

So, anxious to ensure that her tests on the mummies were beyond reproach, she used this very technique - it's called the hair shaft test. Drugs and other substances consumed by humans get into the hair protein, where they stay for months, or after death - forever. Hair samples can be washed in alcohol and the washing solution itself then tested. If the testing solution is clear, but the hair tests positive, then the drug must be inside the hair shaft, which means the person consumed it during their lifetime. It's considered proof against contamination before or after death.

DR JOHN HENRY - Consultant Toxicologist, Guys Hospital, London:
"The hair shaft test is accepted. If you know that you've taken your hair sample from this individual and the hair shaft is known to contain a drug, then it is proof positive that the person has taken that drug. So it is accepted in law. It's put people into prison."

. . . .

ROSALIE DAVID - Keeper of Egyptology, Manchester Museum:
"When I was informed that cocaine had been found in Egyptian mummies, I was absolutely astounded. It seemed quite impossible that this should be the case."

NARRATOR:
Sceptical of Balabanova's results, Rosalie David decided to get some sampless from her own mummies and have them tested especially for 'Equinox'.

ROSALIE DAVID - Keeper of Egyptology, Manchester Museum:
"What we shall do is to provide tissue samples and a hair sample from a number of mummies in the Manchester Museum collection. I shall be very surprised to find they had cocaine in them."

NARRATOR:
It would be a while before the results came back from the lab. Rosalie David's motive was not only to independently check Balabanova's methods. She also wanted to run the same tests but on different mummies. For she had more than one idea about how Balabanova could have got a misleading result.

ROSALIE DAVID - Keeper of Egyptology, Manchester Museum:
"There were two ideas that sprang immediately to mind. One was that possibly something in the tests could give a false result. The second was that possibly the mummies that had been tested were not truly ancient Egyptian, that they could be some of these false, relativly modern mummies, and traces of cocaine could be in those individuals."

. . . .

NARRATOR:
The obvious way to prove this was to show the mummies to Rosalie David, but all the museum would let her see were empty sarcophogi.

DR ALFRED GRIMM - Curator, The Egyptian Museum, Munich:
"On grounds of religious respect we don't show these mummies here in our galleries. That's one point. The other is we don't allow to film the mummies and to show them on TV."

NARRATOR:
It wasn't always so, for the mummies had already been shown on television. But this German film [film showing mummified bodies without wrappings] announcing Balabanova's results has caused quite a fuss. And so now, even though giving access might defeat the accusation of harbouring bogus mummies, it seemed that the museum wanted nothing more to do with the research they politely pointed out was far from respectable.

DR ALFRED GRIMM - Curator, The Egyptian Museum, Munich:
"It's not absolutely proven and I think it's not absolutely scientifically correct."

NARRATOR:
Rosalie had to make do with research papers and books from the museum. Were the Munich mummies fakes? Despite her initial suspicions she decided that on balance, they probably were the real thing.

ROSALIE DAVID - Keeper of Egyptology, Manchester Museum:
"From the documentation and the research which has been carried out on the Munich mummies it seems evident that they are probably genuine because they have packages of viscera inside, some with wax images of the gods on them and also the state of mummification itself is very good. I would say that the detatched heads we can't comment on, but the complete bodies probably are genuine."

NARRATOR:
And if that wasn't enough, it turned out that the results from the Munich mummies were not the only evidence from the dead. The anthropologists who originally ordered the tests didn't continue the project. But Balabanova, alongside her normal research into the metabolism of drugs started requesting samples of other ancient human remains from universities. And it was then that she got more results from Egypt.

She tested tissue from 134 naturally preserved bodies from an excavated cemetery in the Sudan, once part of the Egyptian empire. Although from a later period, the bodies were still many centuries before Columbus discovered the Americas. About a third of them tested positive for nicotine and cocaine.

NARRATOR:
...
Dr Balabonova had told us that we might find the secret of the mysterious presence of nicotine and cocaine in Egyptan mummies in the ancient plants of Africa. Perhaps there had been drug plants which the Egyptians had used but had vanished along with their civilisation. This led to a much more basic question. Were the Egyptians, the great Pharaos and pyramid builders really users and abusers of drugs?

The clues can be found hidden in the walls of the grand temple of Karnak. The entire building is covered depictions of the lotus flower from the tops of the vast columns to the pictograms on the walls. Until recently, Egyptologists took this most commonplace Egyptian symbol to have only a religious meaning. But according to some the true significance of the lotus has been overlooked.

ROSALIE DAVID - Keeper of Egyptology, Manchester Museum:
"The lotus was a very powerful narcotic which was used in ancient Egypt and presumably, was widespread in this use, because we see many scenes of idividuals holding a cup and dropping a lotus flower into the cup which contained wine, and this would be a way of releasing the narcotic.

"The ancient Egyptians certainly used drugs. As well as lotus they had mandrake and cannabis, and there is a strong suggestion the also used opium.

"So although it very surprising to find cocaine in mummies, the other elements were certainly in use."

NARRATOR:
So the Pharaos clearly indulged in drugs. ... the narcotic blue lotus flower, once so essential at parties, is now on the verge of extinction. And if it could disappear, why not other drug plants?

. . . .

DR SVETLA BALABANOVA - Institute of Forensic Medicine, Ulm:
"The cocaine of course remains an open question. It's a mystery - it's completely unclear how cocaine could get into Africa. On the other hand, we know there were trade relationships long before Columbus, and it's conceivable that the coca plant had been imported into Egypt even then."

NARRATOR:
An ancient Egyptian drug trade stretching all the way across the Atlantic Ocean? This was an idea so far-fetched it could only be considered once all the others had been eliminated, the idea that the Egyptians had been able to obtain imports from a place thousands of miles away from a continent supposedly not discovered until thousands of years later.

Was it possible that coca - a plant from South America had been finding it's way to Egypt 3,000 years ago?

. . . .

PROF JOHN BAINES - Egyptologist, Oxford University:
"The idea that the Egyptians were travelling to America is, overall, absurd. I don't know of anyone who is professionally employed as an Egyptologist, anthropologist or archeaologist who seriously believes in any of these possibilities, and I also don't know anyone who spends time doing research into these areas because they're perceived to be areas with any real meaning for the subjects."

...

PROF ALICE KEHOE - Anthropologist, Marquette University:
"I think there is good evidence that there was both trans-atlantic and trans-pacific travel before Columbus. When we try to talk about trans-oceanic contact, people that are standard archeologists get very, um, skittish, and they want to change the subject or move away. They suddenly see a friend across the room - they don't want to pursue the subject at all. They seem to feel that it's some kind of contagious disease they don't want to touch, or it will bring disaster to them."

NARRATOR:
... the idea that the ability of the ancients to cross the oceans might have been underestimated continues to be quietly whispered about. Over the years evidence has grown which suggests it might be time to look again at such voyages. To imagine that the Egyptians, who apparently only sailed up and down the Nile or into the Red Sea, might get as far as the Americas perhaps sounds fantastical. But in science, what is one day thought absurd, can next day become accepted as fact.

. . . .

... if tobacco from Mexico or coca from the Andes was carried across an ocean, it apparently need not have been the Atlantic. According to Alice Kehoe, a number of other American plants mysteriously turn up outside the "sealed" continent. But they are found on the other side of the Pacific.

PROF ALICE KEHOE - Anthropologist, Marquette University:
"The one that absolutely proves trans-pacific vaoyaging is the sweet potato. There are also discoveries of peanuts more than 2,000 years ago in western China. There is a temple is southern India that has sculptures of goddesses holding what looks like ears of maize or corn."

NARRATOR:
And if American maize might have got as far as India, why couldn't tobacco or coca have reached Egypt? They could have come across the Pacific to China or Asia and then overland to Africa. The Egyptians need not have travelled to America at all, or known where the plants had originated, but could have got them indirectly, through a network of world trade. But any ancient trade route that includes America is unacceptable in archeology.

PROF JOHN BAINES - Egyptologist, Oxford University:
"I don't think it is at all likely that there was an ancient trade network that included America. The essential problem with any such idea is that there are no artefacts to back it up that have been found either in Europe or in America. And I know that people produce examples of possible things, but they're really very implausible."

NARRATOR:
Yet discovery of minute strands of silk found in the hair of a mummy from Luxor could suggest the trade stretching from Egypt to the Pacific. For silk at this time was only known to come from China.

. . . .

... The evidence for ancient trade with America is limited, and most of it is disputed, but it can't be completely ruled out as explaining the apparent impossibility of Balabanova's results, results that at first seemed so absurd many thought they would be explained away by a simple story of a botch-up in a lab, results that still without firm explanation continue to crop up in unexpected places.

For in Manchester, the mummies under the care of Rosalie David, the Egyptologist once so sure that Balabanova had made a mistake, produced some odd results of their own.

ROSALIE DAVID - Keeper of Egyptology, Manchester Museum:
"We've received results back from the tests on our mummy tissue samples and two of the samples and the one hair sample both have evidence of nicotine in them. I'm really very surprised at this."

DR SVETLA BALABANOVA - Institute of Forensic Medicine, Ulm:
"The results of the tests on the Manchester mummies have made me very happy after all these years of being accuesed of false results and contaminated results, so I was delighted to hear nicotine had been found in these mummies, and very, very happy to have this enormous confirmation of my work."

NARRATOR:
The tale of Henut Taui shows that in science facts can be rejected if they don't fit with our beleifs while what is believed proven, may actually be uncertain.

Little wonder then, that a story that began with one scientist, a few mummies and some routine tests, in no time at all could upset whole areas of knowledge we thought we could take for granted.

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Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Djehuti:


LOL So it's official you do use recreational drugs!

Also, what are we to make of the ancient Greek story of the Odyssey where Odysseus and his men encounter a people who ate strange "lotus flowers" that gave them great pleasure and had cravings for them. Some say the land or island of the 'Lotus Eaters' lay somewhere in North Africa.

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Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Per Rosalie David - Keeper of Egyptology, Manchester Museum:

As well as

• [blue]lotus

they had

• mandrake

and

• cannabis,

and there is a strong suggestion the also used

• opium.

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Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by ausar:
The only thing other than alcohol the ancient Egyptians used was sniffing lotus flowers. Certain lotus flowers they sniffed did give them a intoxicating feeling.

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Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Ausar

Why do you disagree with this Egyptologist's findings
of cannabis and mandrake and the dissolving of
blue lotus in wine versus sniffing it as powder?

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Posts: 8675 | From: Tukuler al~Takruri as Ardo since OCT2014 | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged | 

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Ethnobotanical Tools in the Ancient Near East
- by William A. Emboden, Jr.:

It is a temptation for the ethnobotanist to find psychoactive plants in early dynastic Egypt, and to that end many have tried to place Cannabis in this context. The contention that bosm, mentioned in both the Berlin Papyrus and Ebers Papyrus, corresponds to Cannabis is highly unlikely. No mummy has been found wrapped in hemp fiber; no rope from the base of Cannabis exists in Egypt from this period. No residues of hashish have been found in any lipid matrices from funerary jars or unguent containers. It was not until the third century A.D., when the Roman emperor Aurelian imposed a tax on an Egyptian fiber, that we can identify hemp.

By contrast, Gabra (1956) identified opiates in a residue from an "unguent vessel" of the eighteenth dynasty. Both the narcotic Mandragora autumnalis, M. vernalis, and fruits of Papaver somniferum figure in tomb paintings and vessels of early dynasties and become quite common by the eighteenth dynasty (Emboden 1979). These are found in frequent conjunction with the sacred blue water lily of the Nile marshes, Nymphaea caerulea, which has been determined to have narcotic properties much as do its relatives N. alba, N. ampla, and the related Nuphar lutea. The union of three genera, all psychoactive and all involved in a healing presentation, is to be seen in the colored limestone intaglio of Meritaton and Semenkhara.


Emboden, W. A. 1979.
The sacred narcotic water lily of the Nile: Nymphaea coerulea Sav.
Economic Botany 33(1): 395-407.

--- 1981.
Transcultural use of narcotic water lilies in ancient Egyptian and Maya drug ritual.
Journal of Ethnopharmacology 3: 39-83.

Gabra, S. 1956.
Papaver species and opium through the ages.
Bulletin de 1'Institut d'Egypte 37: 39-46.

Krikorian, A. D. 1975.
Was the opium poppy and opium known in the ancient Near East?
Journal of the History of Biology 8(1): 95-114.

Kritikos, P. G., and S. P. Papadaki. 1967.
The history of the poppy and of opium and their expansion in antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean area, part I.
Bulletin of Narcotics 19(3): 17-38.

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Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
I know mandrake has powerful hallucinogenic and medicinal properties, but I am more curious about these blue lotus flowers.

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Me too

Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged |