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| Divine food offering from the Roman period temple of Hathor at Dendera |
This post was a spontaneous decision of mine as yet another factoid about the ancient Egyptians consuming mushrooms is being shared online on pages devoted to Egyptology and to ancient history.
And it is a load of cobblers.
To my irritation, because I have written about this topic previously: here and here, with both posts discussing individuals associated with this one. However, since otherwise sensible people are again falling for this hype, and this is being shared widely, I shall provide an overview.
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| Fb post as of 10.09.23 has 89 shares!! |
Interestingly though, this misinformation is a subtle blend of pseudoscience and of sources who ought to know better. Therefore some claims have less to do with woo, and more to do with real science; or rather with academics passing on a factoid that is embedded in their own discipline.
This begins some time in the 1980s within English language scientific papers, and is passed down into today's research as a cheery factoid that is clearly useful to sex up the introductions of otherwise dry fungi studies.
It might be worth adding that some of this misinformation appears at around the same time that new-agers and researchers into entheogens were referring to mushrooms as "food of the gods" (McKenna 1993, Furst 1990, Wasson 1968).
In fact, phrases like "gift of the gods", "plant of immortality" or "flesh of the Gods" are a popular trope associated with a variety of psychoactive substances (plant or fungi) in literature over the past 70 years.... I mean it sounds quite cool n' stuff.
The text:
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| Facebook post 01.09.23, click to enlarge |
The myths
Cheery academic factoid 1
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| Divine food offering from the Roman period temple of Hathor at Dendera |
The Egyptian Book of the Dead does not say this. The food of the gods is not named, but will have been food offered to the gods and the divinised dead.
EAW Budge is ludicrously out of date (1895, 1967 is a reprint), he said some pretty dodgy things, but, give him his due, he never claimed mushrooms were any of these things. Instead, this claim is a conclusion extrapolated from a paper by pseudoscientist Stephen Berlant from 2005, "The Entheomycological Origin of Egyptian Crowns".
Berlant cited (Budge's) Book of the Dead to reinforce his argument that the Egyptians practiced secret rituals with magic mushrooms, but none of the passages mention mushrooms, and since he also believes that the Christmas tree was invented by the Egyptians and decorated there with red magic mushrooms.... I'll take that citation with a pinch of salt.
"Documentation of the Egyptian fungi may be dated back to 4500 B.C., when ancient Egyptians produced a number of hieroglyphic depictions of plants (many of which are psychedelic) on walls and within texts throughout Egypt."
That is a big nope from me. In 4500 BCE Egyptian writing as we know it did not exist. Hieroglyphic script developed as a complex language and writing system after 3500 BCE.
So no depictions on walls and definitely no texts in 4500 .... This error is just plain sloppy.
Pseudo Factoid 2
"Temples with countless pillars are shaped like huge mushrooms with tall stems, umbrella caps, and mushroom engravings distributed all over the country. These are shaped like Amanita sporophores, and some like Psilocybe. Others look like bracket fungi and are decorated with pictures of an incredible variety of plants (Arthur 2000)."
Egyptian temple pillars were not decorated with mushrooms, the capitals were decorated with Egyptian sacred plants: the two lotuses, the papyrus, south flower etc.
This foolish claim originates from a book by pseudoscientist James Arthur 2000, Mushrooms and Mankind that argues the existence of a secret cult of Amanita muscaria officiants, beginning in Egypt and continuing through to today. He also argues the world is controlled by a secret cabal of drugged up masons.
James Arthur had this stroke of genius while on a holiday tour of Egypt..... again, not a reputable source.
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| Image of 'mushrooms' from Facebook post on 01.09.23 |
The images used to argue this
- are an elaborate exercise in looks-a-bit-like-ism.
Because there is no visual evidence for mushrooms from about 3000 years of Egyptian art.
Any number of creative misidentifications have been proposed by magic mushroom proponents: fans, chisels, drills, papyrus, in fact anything vaguelly shaped like a stereotypical mushroom. Yet instead of fungi these images all represent known objects and the hieroglyphs for known objects.
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| illustration by A. Sinclair |
The photographs currently being shared with these claims are from the Roman period temple of Hathor at Dendera, and they show bunches of Nymphaea leaves. Nymphaea (often called lotus) were a very common element of ritual offering scenes. If you look closely on the main photo (on top) you can even see Nymphaea flowers with these leaves.
It is poor science to cherry-pick data that suit an argument and to ignore the examples that refute it.
For clearer examples of leaves, see the images at the beginning of this post, and the 2 below that are from coffins and show lotus flowers, buds and leaves in a bowl, again from an offering scene. The leaves are stylised, but still clearly leaves... green leaves.
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| Blue Nymphaea plants from a Middle Kingdom coffin |
Conclusion
In addition to there being no written or visual evidence for mushrooms in ancient Egypt, there is also no archaeological evidence from any pre-classical site in Egypt, not among the thousands of tombs or temples or even as part of household remains from Egypt... nothing so far.
Yet in fact, the food of the gods and of immortality was not some airy-fairy abstract concept in pharaonic Egypt, rather it was important to survival in the afterlife and therefore it was listed on the walls of Egyptian tombs, in chapels, on sarcophagi, and on the reliefs shown above from Dendera.
The food of the divine was beer, bread, milk, poultry, beef, onions, lettuce, figs, grapes and wine. These are meticulously listed in the texts accompanying images of offerings.
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| Offerings on Middle Kingdom coffin, Steindorff museum, Leipzig. Image Sinclair. |
In fact the standard offering formula to the dead from Egypt states "An offering that the king gives to (insert god), an offering of bread and beer, fowl and cattle etc for the life of the ka of (insert dead person)".... 3000 years of coffins and yet not one mention of mushroom....
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| An offering of bread, beer, beef & fowl, Mid. Kingdom coffin. Image A. Sinclair. |
To wind up, I hope I don't need to add that citing pseudoscience does in no way enhance the credibility of a claim about the ancient world, nor does it reassure me about the diligence of any academic researcher who uses these lazy tactics in their research papers.
There is currently no written or material evidence for a value for mushrooms in ancient Egypt. Fungi were not prohibited to commoners, nor were they restricted food for elites and kings, they were also not the food of gods, nor of immortality... bread, meat and beer were.
Andrea Sinclair
Sept. 2023
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| Another coffin, image A. Sinclair. |
General references
Non-academic sources of these factoids
Berlant, S. 2019, ‘An Egyptian Christmas Tree in the Tomb of the Scribe Roy,’ unpublished draft at Academia.edu.
Academic sources - "Gift of Osiris" .....please stop