Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com – A recent study conducted by the Yale Ancient Pharmacology Program (YAPP) has identified traces of opiates in an ancient alabaster vase from the Yale Peabody Museum’s Babylonian Collection.
This discovery provides the most substantial evidence so far of widespread opium use in ancient Egyptian society. According to Andrew J. Koh, YAPP’s principal investigator and lead author of the study, this finding also suggests that other similar Egyptian alabaster vessels—crafted from calcite sourced from the same quarries and including notable examples found in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun—may contain remnants of ancient opiates.
“Our findings combined with prior research indicate that opium use was more than accidental or sporadic in ancient Egyptian cultures and surrounding lands and was, to some degree, a fixture of daily life,” said Koh, a research scientist at the Yale Peabody Museum. “We think it’s possible, if not probable, that alabaster jars found in King Tut’s tomb contained opium as part of an ancient tradition of opiate use that we are only now beginning to understand.”
The alabaster vase is a significant artifact, bearing inscriptions in four ancient languages—Akkadian, Elamite, Persian, and Egyptian—dedicated to Xerxes I, who ruled the Achaemenid Empire from 486 to 465 BCE. At its peak, this empire was centered in Persia and encompassed regions such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Levant, Anatolia, Eastern Arabia, and parts of Central Asia.
A secondary inscription on the vase is written in Demotic script—a simplified form of ancient Egyptian writing—and notes that the vessel holds approximately 1,200 milliliters. The vase stands 22 centimeters tall. According to researchers, intact inscribed alabaster vessels from ancient Egypt are extremely rare; fewer than ten are known to exist in collections worldwide.
Auadrilingual inscription on the alabaster vase. Credit: Yale University
The origins of these intact vessels are generally unclear but span the reigns of Achaemenid emperors Darius I, Xerxes I, and Artaxerxes I (circa 550–425 BCE). Yale’s alabaster vase has been part of its Babylonian Collection since shortly after the university’s establishment of the collection in 1911, which assembled around 40,000 artifacts.
At Yale’s Peabody Museum is YAPP (Yale Ancient Pharmacology Program), which uses ethnography alongside scientific and technological methods to better understand life thousands of years ago. Researchers analyze organic residues found on or inside ancient vessels to gain insights into historical diets and lifestyles. YAPP has developed specialized techniques for studying these organic materials—which naturally degrade over time and can be contaminated—in both museum-held artifacts and newly excavated items.
The vase is inscribed in four languages to Xerxes I, who ruled the Achaemenid Empire from 486 to 465 BCE. Credit: Yale University
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 a great deal of information about the daily lives of ancient peoples, including what they ate, the medicines they used, and how they spent their leisure time,” Koh said.
King Tutankhamun’s Tomb And Ancient Opium
In this recent study, Koh’s curiosity was sparked by the discovery of dark-brown aromatic residues inside the ancient vase. Analysis by YAPP identified several compounds—noscapine, hydrocotarnine, morphine, thebaine, and papaverine—which are recognized biomarkers for opium.
Researchers note that these findings are consistent with previous discoveries of opiate residues in Egyptian alabaster vessels and Cypriot base-ring juglets from a tomb in Sedment, Egypt. This tomb likely belonged to a merchant family and dates back to the New Kingdom period (16th–11th century BCE).
According to Koh, these two sets of evidence—spanning over a thousand years and various social classes—suggest that opium may also be present in many alabaster vessels found in Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
The research highlights clear indications that opium use extended beyond medicinal purposes into spiritual practices throughout antiquity. This pattern is observed across regions from ancient Mesopotamia to Egypt and into the Aegean world. For example, during Tutankhamun’s era, ritualistic associations with poppies were evident on Crete through depictions of the “poppy goddess.” The significance of the poppy plant is further supported by references found in numerous ancient texts such as the Ebers Papyrus, works by Hippocrates and Dioscorides (De Materia Medica), and writings by Galen.
Howard Carter, an Egyptologist and archaeologist, discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in November 1922. This significant find included a large collection of artifacts, among them numerous well-preserved Egyptian alabaster vessels considered to be some of the finest from Tutankhamun’s reign (1333–1323 BCE).
Howard Carter entered King Tutankhamen’s burial chamber and found a series of coffins that contained the teen king’s mummified body. Public domain
In 1933, Alfred Lucas, an analytical chemist on Carter’s team, conducted a preliminary chemical analysis of these vessels. Many contained sticky, dark brown substances with aromatic qualities. Although Lucas could not chemically identify these organic materials at the time, he concluded that most were not unguents or perfumes.
According to Koh, Lucas questioned whether any vessels actually contained perfumes or unguents and did not classify their contents as primarily aromatic, despite prevailing expectations to do so during that era.
Since Lucas’s initial study in the early 20th century, no further chemical analysis has been performed on these organic materials. Today, the alabaster vessels and most other artifacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb are preserved at the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, Egypt.
Following his groundbreaking discovery, Carter observed evidence of an ancient looting event that specifically targeted the alabaster vessels, according to researchers. Fingerprints found inside these vessels indicate that the looters made a thorough effort to scrape out every last bit of their contents. Many of the vessels contained a dark-brown, aromatic substance which, as Lucas determined, was not perfume. Some vessels were left untouched by looters and still contain their original materials.
The significance of these contents is underscored by the fact that they were chosen to accompany Tutankhamen into the afterlife and were valuable enough to motivate grave robbers to risk severe consequences for them, Koh explained. He further noted that it is unlikely such a value would have been placed on ordinary unguents and perfumes at that time.
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“We now have found opiate chemical signatures that show Egyptian alabaster vessels were attached to elite societies in Mesopotamia and embedded in more ordinary cultural circumstances within ancient Egypt,” Koh said. “It’s possible these vessels were easily recognizable cultural markers for opium use in ancient times, just as hookahs today are attached to shisha tobacco consumption. Analyzing the contents of the jars from King Tut’s tomb would further clarify the role of opium in these ancient societies.”
The study was published in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies
Written by Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com Staff Writer