Muristek
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL—According to a BBC News report, traces of opium have been detected on pottery recovered from a 3,400-year-old burial in central Israel in 2012 by researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), Tel Aviv University, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. The opium, found in pottery made in Cyprus, is thought to have been grown in Turkey. The vessels are known as Base-Ring juglets, which are shaped like inverted closed poppy flowers. It had long been thought that such vessels may have been used in rituals involving the drug. “It may be that during these ceremonies, conducted by family members or a by a priest on their behalf, participants attempted to raise the spirits of their dead relatives in order to express a request, and would enter an ecstatic state by using opium,” said Ron Be'eri of the IAA. Opium may have been placed by the body, he added, as a way to help the person’s spirit rise to meet their relatives in the next life. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Archaeometry. To read about the use of opium in rituals performed in the ancient Caucasus, go to "Rites of the Scythians."
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