Tag: archaeology

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Researcher Discovers Ancient Egyptian Mugs Contained Hallucinogens

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(a) Drinking vessel in shape of Bes head; El-Fayūm Oasis, Egypt; Ptolemaic-Roman period (4th century BCE − 3rd century CE), (courtesy of the Tampa Museum of Art, Florida). (b) Bes mug from the Ghalioungui collection, 10.7 × 7.9 cm (Ghalioungui, G. Wagner 1974, Kaiser 2003, cat. no. 342). (c) Bes mug inv. no. 14.415 from the Allard Pierson Museum, 11.5 × 9.3 cm (courtesy of the Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam; photo by Stephan van der Linden). (d) Bes mug from El-Fayum, dimensions unknown (Kaufmann 1913; Kaiser 2003, cat. no. 343). Credit: Scientific Reports, 2024

The first-ever physical evidence of hallucinogens in an Egyptian mug has been found, validating written records and centuries-old myths of ancient Egyptian rituals and practices. Through advanced chemical analyses, University of South Florida professor Davide Tanasi examined one of the world’s few remaining Egyptian Bes mugs.

Such mugs, including the one donated to the Tampa Museum of Art in 1984, are decorated with the head of Bes, an ancient Egyptian god or guardian demon worshiped for protection, fertility, medicinal healing and magical purification. Published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, the study sheds light on an ancient Egyptian mystery: The secret of how Bes mugs were used about 2000 years ago. 

“There’s no research out there that has ever found what we found in this study,” Tanasi said. “For the first time, we were able to identify all the chemical signatures of the components of the liquid concoction contained in the Tampa Museum of Art’s Bes mug, including the plants used by Egyptians, all of which have psychotropic and medicinal properties.”

The presence of Bes mugs in different contexts over a long period of time made it extremely difficult to speculate on their contents or roles in ancient Egyptian culture.

“For a very long time now, Egyptologists have been speculating what mugs with the head of Bes could have been used for, and for what kind of beverage, like sacred water, milk, wine or beer,” said Branko van Oppen, curator of Greek and Roman art at the Tampa Museum of Art. “Experts did not know if these mugs were used in daily life, for religious purposes or in magic rituals.”

Several theories about the mugs and vases were formulated on myths, but few of them were ever tested to reveal their exact ingredients until the truth was extracted layer by layer.

Tanasi, who developed this study as part of the Mediterranean Diet Archaeology project promoted by the USF Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture and the Environment, collaborated with several USF researchers and partners in Italy at the University of Trieste and the University of Milan to perform chemical and DNA analyses. With a pulverised sample from scraping the inner walls of the vase, the team combined numerous analytical techniques for the first time to uncover what the mug last held.

The new tactic was successful and revealed the vase had a cocktail of psychedelic drugs, bodily fluids and alcohol – a combination that Tanasi believes was used in a magical ritual re-enacting an Egyptian myth, likely for fertility. The concoction was flavoured with honey, sesame seeds, pine nuts, liquorice and grapes, which were commonly used to make the beverage look like blood.

“This research teaches us about magic rituals in the Greco-Roman period in Egypt,” Van Oppen said. “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. 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.”

“Religion is one of the most fascinating and puzzling aspects of ancient civilizations,” Tanasi said. “With this study, we’ve found scientific proof that the Egyptian myths have some kind of truth and it helps us shed light on the poorly understood rituals that were likely carried out in the Bes Chambers in Saqqara, near the Great Pyramids at Giza.”

The Bes mug is on display now at the Tampa Museum of Art and can be viewed in the exhibition, “Prelude: An Introduction to the Permanent Collection.” View a 3D model of the Bes mug produced by the USF Institute for Digital Exploration.

Categories : GeneticsTags :

First DNA Study of Ancient Eastern Arabians Reveals Malaria Adaptation

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Photo by MJ RAHNAMA

People living in ancient Eastern Arabia appear to have developed resistance to malaria following the appearance of agriculture in the region around five thousand years ago, a new study published its in Cell Genomics reveals.

DNA analysis of the remains of four individuals from Tylos-period Bahrain (300 BCE to 600 CE) – the first ancient genomes from Eastern Arabia – revealed the malaria-protective G6PD Mediterranean mutation in three samples.

The discovery of the G6PD Mediterranean mutation in ancient Bahrainis suggests that many people in the region’s ancient populations may have enjoyed protection from malaria.

In the present day, among the populations examined, the G6PD mutation is detected at its peak frequency in the Emirates, the study indicates.

Researchers discovered that the ancestry of Tylos-period inhabitants of Bahrain comprises sources related to ancient groups from Anatolia, the Levant and Caucasus/Iran.

The four Bahrain individuals were genetically more like present-day populations from the Levant and Iraq than to Arabians.

Experts from Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Birmingham Dubai, and the University of Cambridge worked with the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities and other Arabian institutes such as the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dubai, as well as research centres in Europe.

Lead researcher Rui Martiniano, from Liverpool John Moores University, commented: “According to our estimates, the G6PD Mediterranean mutation rose in frequency around five-to-six thousand years ago — coinciding with the onset of agriculture in the region, which would have created ideal conditions for the proliferation of malaria.”

Due to poor ancient DNA preservation in hot and humid climates, no ancient DNA from Arabia has been sequenced until now — preventing the direct examination of the genetic ancestry of its past populations.

Marc Haber, from the University of Birmingham Dubai, commented: “By obtaining the first ancient genomes from Eastern Arabia, we provide unprecedented insights into human history and disease progression in this region. This knowledge goes beyond historical understanding, providing predictive capabilities for disease susceptibility, spread, and treatment, thus promoting better health outcomes.”

“The rich population history of Bahrain, and more generally of Arabia, has been severely understudied from a genetic perspective. We provide the first genetic snapshot of past Arabian populations – obtaining important insights about malaria adaptation, which was historically endemic in the region,” commented Fatima Aloraifi, from the Mersey and West Lancashire NHS Trust.

Salman Almahari, Director of Antiquities and Museums at the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, states, “Our study also paves the way for future research that will shed light on human population movements in Arabia and other regions with harsh climates where it is difficult to find well-preserved sources of DNA.”

Data gathered from the analysis of the four individuals’ remains allowed researchers to characterise the genetic composition of the region’s pre-Islamic inhabitants – insights that could only have been obtained by directly examining ancient DNA sequences.

Researchers collected ancient human remains from archaeological collections stored at the Bahrain National Museum, gathering DNA from 25 of them. Only four samples were sequenced to higher coverage due to poor preservation.

The finding of malaria adaptation agrees with archaeological and textual evidence that suggested malaria was historically endemic in Eastern Arabia, whilst the DNA ancestry of Tylos-period inhabitants of Bahrain corroborates archaeological evidence of interactions between Bahrain and neighbouring regions.

Source: University of Birmingham

Categories : Diseases, Syndromes and Conditions PaediatricsTags :

Rickets in the Industrial Revolution Driven by Low Vitamin D

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Photo by Mayur Gala on Unsplash

Rickets ran rife in children following the Industrial Revolution, but University of Otago-led research has found factory work and polluted cities aren’t entirely to blame for the period’s vitamin D deficiencies.

In a study published in PLOS One, researchers sampled teeth from a cemetery site in industrial era England, looking for microscopic markers of nutritional disease.

Lead author Dr Annie Sohler-Snoddy, Research Fellow in Otago’s Department of Anatomy, says they uncovered some of the first clear evidence of seasonal vitamin D deficiency in an archaeological sample.

She says it has been known for many years that there was an increase in rickets, a childhood bone disease caused by vitamin D deficiency, in 18th and 19th Century Europe.

“It has been assumed that this was due to more people, including children, working long hours indoors, living in crowded housing and in smog-filled environments, all of which reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches a person’s skin, which is the main way humans make vitamin D.”

However, new bioarchaeological methods enabled the researchers to get a much clearer picture of how vitamin D deficiency affected the people living in industrial England, rather than looking at bone deformities alone.

The study, from Otago, Durham University, University of Edinburgh, University of Brighton, and University of Queensland, found markers associated with vitamin D deficiency in the interior part of 76% of the teeth analysed.

In many samples, these occurred regularly, in annual increments.

“This shows clear evidence of seasonal vitamin D deficiency in the teeth of people living in the north of England.

“This is exciting because it highlights that latitude and seasonal lack of sunlight was a major factor in the amount of vitamin D these people could make in their skin – it’s more complicated than the factors associated with the industrial revolution like working indoors more,” Dr Sohler-Snoddy explains.

Poor vitamin D status is associated with several negative health outcomes including increased risk for infectious diseases, cardiovascular disease, and cancers.

Vitamin D deficiency has been an ongoing problem in society and Dr Sohler-Snoddy believes it is important to study what happened in the past in order to inform modern approaches to the ailment.

“We tend to think of archaeological human remains as belonging to a different world, but our biology hasn’t changed in the last 200 years.

“Teeth provide a really important source of information for archaeologists as they form in a very precise chronology and, importantly, their tissues do not change over the lifespan. This means that they lock in a record of a person’s development and this stays with them until they die, or the tooth is lost.

“Understanding how vitamin D deficiency impacted past populations and why gives us an important deep-time perspective on the disease,” she says.

Source: University of Otago