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I was aiming for tasteless and incongruous. Yet am still idly wondering if it is too subtle. Tutankhamen and Ankhesenamen
photoshopped with weed, image by A. Sinclair. |
Since I wrote the first pieces I have ended up following other white rabbits into dubious burrows which resulted in me writing a presentation for a conference (‘High Times in Ancient Egypt’), and my partner (and cat) enduring that timeless catch phrase, ‘damn, this really ought to be a blog post too’.
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| I am not sure about you, but this looks like a backhanded compliment to me. |
This post is dedicated to the false narratives that have been built around the ancient Egyptians knowing and using cannabis in medicine and cult during the pharaonic period.
In this piece I am going to cite ten misleading claims that are spread around the web, in the media, but most disappointingly, also in some academic publications. At the end of each section I will provide academic references, misinformation sources will be at the end of the post.
Before we go anywhere and the usual suspects start screeching ‘suppression of the truth’, let’s get this clear, I personally support the legalisation of cannabis. What I absolutely do not support is the spread of misinformation.
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| While Lise Manniche did write that šmšm.t was cannabis in An Ancient Egyptian Herbal (1989) the rest is a mess. |
1) The Egyptians called cannabis ‘shemshemet’
This statement depends entirely on the assumption that the word for cannabis has been identified, with a plethora of weed toking sites, alternative culture and entheogen books, and even Wikipedia stating that Egyptian medical papyri contain remedies using cannabis as an ingredient.
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Piankoff 1968, The Pyramid of Unas
Unas has twisted the shem-shem-plant into ropes, Unas has united the heavens.
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| Image of a transcription of Unas line 514 from Sethe 1922. |
Dawson 1934, ‘Studies in Egyptian Medical Texts III’
It is tempting to identify the plant with the Arabic SmSm, sesame, but the two can scarcely be identical, for sesame is constantly used for internal doses, whereas SmSmt never is. The word occurs in the Pyramid Texts (§ 514) with an elaborate determinative, and is spoken of as a plant from which ropes are made, which makes an equivalence with hemp, Cannabis sativa, much more likely.
Not everybody in Egyptology accepted this identification at the time, as there is no corroborating evidence. For this reason, this identification has been rejected by some experts on healing plants and medicine from Egypt.
Translations of the Pyramid of Unas texts do not translate shemshemet as hemp. Instead Egyptologists either use the original Egyptian word (which infers they don’t believe it to be identified), or they translate it as peppergrass, a type of cress.
Allen 2005, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts
For Unis has tied together the peppergrass cords, Unis has united the skies.
None of the following translated šmšm.t as hemp:
Allen, J.P. 2005, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Atlanta.
Faulkner R.O. 1969, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford.
Mercer, S.A.B. 1952, The Pyramid Texts. Toronto.
Piankoff, A. 1968, Egyptian Religious Texts and Representations 5: The Pyramid of Unas. Princeton.
Shmakov, T.T. 2012, Critical Analysis of J. P. Allen’s «The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts». Omsk-Tricht.
It’s a bad sign when the tip-top experts are overly cautious, or is it? 
2) Egyptians used cannabis for treating illness
There are 9 recipes from medical papyri containing shemshemet:
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| Ebers 821: Shemshemet is the 'robot face' bang in the middle. |
None of these recipes is consumed, only one is fumigated, and it is to expel a ‘poison seed’, we simply don’t know what that might have been.
Therefore, it is advisable not to overly glamorise their scientific knowledge or assume Egyptian medical skill was unanimously brilliant, like this clickbait site below does… the Egyptians were human and from a pre-industrial/modern medicine era... as a result their medical science is somewhat hit and miss.
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| No idea how they went from recipe for a uterine douche to treating women for depression. |
After having read over 875-ish remedies in the Ebers Papyrus (and rummaged around in other papyri), I for one would not be endorsing the curative powers of some of these remedies… some are downright unhygienic.
For example, rubbing blood from a black steer, or a crow, on the head for preventing greying hair (Ebers 451 & 457). This is an example of imitative magic not medicine - i.e. believing that the blood from black animals will cause hair to blacken.
Nonetheless, I suspect eating crushed fruit for loosening the bowels could be quite effective... like I said, hit and miss.
But whatever… without a definite identification of the plant shemshemet, every citation of cannabis as a pharmaceutical ingredient in ancient Egypt is blowing smoke up your whatsit.
Ebers Papyrus at Science in Ancient Egypt website: https://sae.saw-leipzig.de/en/documents/papyrus-ebers
This claim is also dependent on the identification of shemshemet being correct, and it relies on the reader not looking up the original texts.
I might add, it is much more time consuming refuting misinformation than making it up.
Three 18th Dynasty tombs mention shemshemet: Neferhotep (TT 50), Amenemhab (TT 85) and Kenamen (TT 93). The texts are not identical, some are quite damaged, but they are fairly consistent with phrasing and details. Shemshemet is cited clearly in Neferhotep, but less clearly from the other tombs which do not exist in original condition.
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| Tomb of Amenemhab, transcribed by Virey in 1891. |
Translations of these texts differ greatly, which has a had lot of influence on interpretation.
Amenemhab (above) is a very poor source, as large sections of the text are missing, and there appear to be incorrect signs, either from the scribe or from this copier. It is not a reliable example.
Tomb of Neferhotep text (Hari, p. 47-9)
May your mouth be open to the saret-plant from the garden, to the sspt-plants that grow (because of) Ptah, to the shemshemet plants created by Re, perfume in your mouth thanks to these. The garden has grown abundantly because of this (namely the shemshemet and the rushes). May you be given the plants of the earth (that grow) in the Fields of Iaru, may you sit on the shore, and your heart be satisfied by the waters of rejuvenation.
Only Neferhotep has been translated with ‘Re made shemshemet’, the others use the same phrase, but are interpreted differently. The tomb of Kenamen only refers to shemshemet as a comparison, referring to another plant, isu reed, ‘to which Re has given scent’. Therefore, it is possible these texts may be intended to be read with the sun god responsible for the aromas of plants.
Which makes sense, as Re was the creator of everything earthly.
However, this general notion of creation is then interpreted as the god specifically having created cannabis, because this sounds quite cool, and a magical narrative appears to be important to these sorts of pseudo-historical recreations. An Egyptian god granting humankind a plant or drug is a popular false fact, with examples such as Osiris bestowing mushrooms on humankind, or Thoth teaching physicians the use of opium (see earlier posts here and here).
Vexingly for the argument above from Bennett, it is not unclear what the nature of this offering was from these tombs, as the context of this text is the deceased and his wife in the fields of the afterlife enjoying the fruits of the garden. These were not offerings, but rather they express hopes for life after death. This too is set in mythical time.
The text promises the ka (soul/essence) of the dead person abundant vegetation and foods from the gardens of Sekhet Iaru: these are cucumber/melon, onion/garlic, reeds, shemshemet and two other unidentified plants, kheset (possibly bryony) and saret.
There is no mention of incense or fumigation, these are examples of fresh garden produce.
If cannabis were an important plant of egyptian temple and funerary ritual it would be recorded somewhere else than only a few New Kingdom tombs and an Old Kingdom pyramid.
In addition, the use of shemshemet in these symbolic scenes in Theban tombs does not indicate the nature of this plant, except that it grows lushly and may be paired with reeds in a garden setting, nor does it indicate any association with its use as a ritual intoxicant or medicine.
See:
Davies, N. de Garis 1930, Tomb of Ḳen-Amūn at Thebes I. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Graindorge, C. 1992, ‘Les oignons de Sokar’. Revue d’Égyptologie.
Hari, R. 1985, La tombe thébaine du père divin Neferhotep (TT50). Editions des Belles-Lettres.
Virey, P. 1891, Sept tombeau thébains de la XVIIIe Dynastie. Mission Archéologique Française.
4) The earliest use of cannabis was rope
The problem with this assumption by Dawson and others is that it is ethnocentric. English speakers may call rope and coarse fabrics hemp, because often these are made from a variety of cannabis. As a result, hemp has become a general word to describe rope, particularly in older research due to subjective ideas about what this would be.
Basically, if you asked an ancient Egyptian what rope would be made from, their ethnocentric answer would be - a sedge or reed. And they would stand a much better chance of being correct.
We have come a long way in 150 years of archaeology, so sensibly most experts now avoid the misnomer for identifying fibres, because there is currently no supporting archaeological evidence for hemp from pharaonic Egypt.
And then there is the bleeding obvious: Hemp ≠ Hashish
Hemp fibre is not highly psychoactive, the flowers of the female cannabis plant are.
Many
ancient cultures have used hemp for making textiles, basketry and rope,
that doesn’t automatically equate with party use. Ancient Greek and
Roman botanists for example are often cited to support this claim, but
their texts tend to list cannabis for rope making, medicine and as a
palate stimulant.
Herodotus, on the other hand, mentions throwing the seeds over hot stones for cleaning and purification in the Histories, but he is talking about Scythian funeral practices in central Eurasia in 440 BCE, not ancient Greek, nor Egyptian customs.
However, this claim may well be valid, as at least one Pazyryk tomb has coughed up seeds, and we know the plant was around the
eastern Mediterranean in the middle of the 1st millennium BCE, but that
doesn’t tell us whether the Egyptians valued
it as a medicinal ingredient or ritual psychoactive.
There is no evidence anyone in Egypt was smoking it.
Herodotus, Histories, Perseus Digital Library - http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hoppe/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126%3Abook%3D4%3Achapter%3D75%3Asection%3D1
5) The tomb of Akhenaten contained hemp
This tomb was discovered by local Egyptians in the late 1800s, and had already been entered, robbed and substantially damaged many times in antiquity long before them. Since 1880 it had been damaged further, so very little remained in the tomb when it was finally studied by Egyptologists. Even less will have been original to the 18th Dynasty.
The citation by Rudgely (1998) that is popular around the traps claiming the tomb contained cannabis was taken from the excavation volume of Martin (1989) who concluded that C. sativa fibres found in 1982 were Roman period and not earlier. These fibres were identified visually by Germer who more recently (2008) rejects cannabis in Egypt before the Roman period, because there is no archaeological evidence.
It also may not be C. sativa.
See:
Martin, G.T. 1989, The Royal Tomb at El-ʽAmarna VII. ASE 39.
Abel, E. L. 1980, Marijuana - The First Twelve Thousand Years. New York.
Peet, T.E. and Woolley, C.L. 1923, City of Akhenaten I. Egyptian Exploration Society.
Rudgely, R. 1998, Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances. London.
This claim stems from research done on the corpse of Ramses II in France in the 1970s (not 1881). The gentleman in question was a very long reigning Egyptian king of the 19th Dynasty who died at a grand old age in about 1212 BCE. No later scientific studies have confirmed this finding.
This is important, because if further studies have not confirmed data there is always a risk of contamination, or human error affecting the result. It is also best to keep in mind that Ramses’ elderly corpse was plonked in a museum more than 140 years ago, and in the bad ol’ days museums were happy to display artefacts without protection and to use insecticides to keep them bug free....oh, and many psychoactives were not illegal at the time.
Therefore, there is a decent chance this finding, if correct, is from contamination associated with early museum practices, or with the fact that before going ‘legit’, and moving to the Cairo museum in 1881 Ramses and a bunch of other royal mummies were lying in a reused tomb that had functioned as a looter’s income generator for about 10 to 20 years (Royal Cache TT 320).
The 1985 French study of plant pollens from this mummy found traces of cannabis pollen in the abdomen. In the same context, they also found cotton pollen, a plant that is not known in Egypt before the Ptolemaic period (so not before 325 BCE). Again, inferring contamination.
Leroi-Gourhan, A. 1985. ‘Les pollens et l’embaumement.’ In La momie de Ramsès II: recherches sur les civilisations, L. Balout and C. Roubet (eds), Paris, 162-6.
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| Hilliard wins the internet with this idiocy. |
Apart from this study only a handful of mummies have provided vaguely similar results:
1) In 1992 a study of 9 mummified remains from Munich found hashish, nicotine and cocaine in the hair, tissue and bone of all samples. The 1st problem with this claim is that the date range is too large, anywhere between 1070 BCE and 395 CE (late Roman). Next, their publications lack the sort of data one might expect from sciency type science, as a single page is understated to say the least. Finally, all mummy bits were purchased in the 19th century and resided in the collection of the king of Bavaria for decades. Who knows what sort of parties he threw.
Balabanova, S., F. Parsche and W. Pirsig, 1992, ‘First Identification of Drugs in Egyptian Mummies.’ Naturwissenschaften 79: 358.
2) In 1987 a study of a Roman mummy in Lyon museum found cannabis pollen in the resin used for mummification. The problem here is this was also purchased by the museum in the 19th century, with no information available about its origin or preservation. So again, modern contamination cannot be excluded. This study also does not provide evidence of cannabis in Egypt before the Roman period.
Evin, J. 1987, ‘Datation par le Carbone 14.’ 111-12, & Girard, M. 1987, ‘Etude palynologique.’103-10. In Nouvelles archives du Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Lyon 25.
The glaring lack of evidence from any other mummies from a culture that has coughed up a metric shit-ton of data and a similar amount of dead people wrapped in spicy resinous linen, leans heavily against the reliability of the results cited here. Instead modern contamination either from exposure to the elements, contamination from pesticides or even laboratory contamination cannot be ruled out.
At this point in time there is no secure and uncontested archaeological evidence of cannabis from ancient Egyptian funerary contexts... Not tombs, nor the mummies of dead Egyptians, not a single mummy wrapping, no matter what clickbait pseudo-history sites like Ancient Origins say.
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| A nice example of terminal inaccuracy when citing the usual suspects, Amarna was founded ca. 1355 BCE btw. |
For critiques see:
Buckland, P.C., and E. Panagiotakapolu, 2001, ‘Ramses II and the Tobacco Beetle.’ Antiquity 75: 549-56.
Counsell, D.J., 2008, ‘Intoxicants in Ancient Egypt? Opium, Nymphaea, Coca, and Tobacco.’ Egyptian Mummies and Modern Science, R. David (ed.), 211-5. Cambridge.
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| Some sources eh? Alarm bells should go off whenever you read that. |
Kyphi is an interesting example of the technique of forcing unrelated data to fit your model, because we know the ancient Egyptians had a fondness for highly aromatic substances, like frankincense and myrrh. They were equally happy to depict this in their art and write about it in their literature, we even have the recipes.
Nonetheless, shemshemet is nowhere mentioned as an ingredient of the ancient Egyptian perfume and incense called Kyphi, neither in the pharaonic period, nor even in the Ptolemaic or Roman eras.
In addition, the incense that was burned in grand scale ritual contexts in temples and used by Egyptian kings was called senetjer. This incense is recorded to have been sourced from Punt, south of Egypt, and it was most likely frankincense resin, although a good case has also been made for pistachio resin.
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| Ramses II offering senetjer at Karnak temple, image Hedwig Storch @Wikipedia. |
Ebers Spell 852 (L. Popko/A. Sinclair)
Kyphi: An incense mixture: That which is done in order to make the odour of a house or of clothing pleasant:
Dried myrrh, Phoenician juniper berries, frankincense, gw grass, East-African camphor wood (?), mastic (or: mash), marsh reed from Syro-Palestine, inktun and ḏemten drug, storax tree resin (?).
To be finely ground. (And) made into a homogenous mass. (Something) from this is put on a fire.
As you can see the ingredients are mostly recognisable aromatic plants. Only two ingredients are unidentified and these are not shemshemet. Later Classical period recipes from Plutarch, Galen and Dioscurides are very similar to this one, but they can also include ingredients like raisins, wine, cardamom and cinnamon.
Still no cannabis.
Regardless of the weakness of this connection, Bennett above has posited that cannabis ‘might’ have been an ingredient of incense, because… hey… Egyptians burned incense and weed is burned right? ... Then he has spouted a creative fiction about mind altering substances, priests and gods to hammer his non-existent point home... more smoke and mirrors.
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Every man and his dog uses this artwork to flog the idea that the Egyptians used cannabis. |
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| There is nothing quite as credible as citing a pharmacist from before Egyptology existed as a scientific discipline. |
It is bog standard for this topic to cite Homer to argue the Egyptians had cannabis and brewed up a storm of wickedly powerful drugs in Thebes, the coolest of these being called nepenthes. This is, to put it politely, rather a wild exaggeration on the original texts. It would, in fact, put a few modern tabloids to shame for quality messing with the facts.
Firstly, there is one source for this claim: Homer’s Odyssey (7th c. BCE), other Greek and Roman writers are parroting Homer when they discuss nepenthes. And nobody opted for cannabis btw, Theophrastus, Rufus, Plutarch etc all had resourceful suggestions, some argued it was a type of wine, others that it was magical or metaphorical.
Egypt takes credit as the source for nepenthes because a little later in the same text Homer says this drug was given to Helen by an Egyptian woman, and you know those cunning Egyptians, they are descended from the god Thoth, and therefore were skilled in the medicinal arts.
600 years later Diodorus repeated Homer’s tale of Helen spiking the mixer, and then added that the women of Thebes were reputed to brew a powerful drug that cures anger and sorrow (in the Roman period).
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But he doesn’t take it any further than that ... basically, Diodorus didn’t know what nepenthes was, nor did Theosphrastus, Dioscurides, or Pliny the Elder (the cool kids who wrote botanical treatises), and neither do we.
And it is probably worth adding that Homer’s story of the adventures of Odysseus is a fable, with umpteen magical creatures and a wily goddess who turns men into pigs, therefore the drug the daughter of Zeus used may simply have been artistic licence, a magical device to further his plot.
In support of this I might point out that the ancient Greeks had a perfectly good word for cannabis – kannabis… botanists wrote about its uses for rope, medicine and as a condiment…we have our word from them....
Homer could simply have said kannabis if he meant cannabis.
Therefore, zero support from classical writers that cannabis was nepenthes…
Homer, Odyssey @ Perseus Digital Library, Tufts - http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136%3Abook%3D4%3Acard%3D219
Diodorus Siculus, Library, Oldfather translation @ Penelope Uni. Chicago -https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/1D*.html
Osbaldeston, TA. and RPA. Wood 2000, Dioscurides, de Materia Medica. Johannesburg.
I have put this here, not because it is a common myth, but rather because it is a nice example of manipulative citation methods.
The research referred to above is misdirection, in that this study by Rosch (see below) did find ‘Humulus/Cannabis’ as a contaminant in clay vessels from the site of a Coptic church at Kom el Ahmar in Middle Egypt. Humulus is a variety of hops that may be used as a cannabis substitute, the paper never calls this Cannabis sativa.
Rosch M. 2004, ‘Pollen Analysis of the Contents of Excavated Vessels – Direct Archaeobotanical Evidence of Beverages.’ Vegetation History and Archaeobotany @ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226062487_Pollen_analysis_of_the_contents_of_excavated_vessels_-_Direct_archaeobotanical_evidence_of_beverages
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| There is a lot to unpack here, silk weavers? ... Asherah? .... resin rubbed on the body? |
Seshat was the Egyptian goddess of scribes and record keeping, basically she was the gods’ magical accountant and engineer, who recorded the length of a ruler’s reign and oversaw the foundation of major building projects. While it is possible to find claims that she was goddess of medicine, this was Thoth’s territory, the god of learning.
There is actually nothing associated with this goddess and her duties that would give reason to conclude she was the goddess of cannabis… nothing except the generous employment of the ‘looks-a-bit-like’ system of identification.
The source of this idea is a history hobbyist, Peter Aleff, who in the early 2000s claimed the symbol that is worn over the goddess’s head is a cannabis leaf. His idea was then adopted by Chris Bennett in the book Cannabis and the Soma Solution and the rest took it from there.
This error of judgement is then seamlessly backed up on dodgy sites like Wikipedia and Ancient Origins with images that take liberties with Egyptian art. To hammer the rationale home, these modern drawings make the goddess’s diadem green, when the original symbol is yellow, or on occasion red-brown… it is never green…
Yes, I wasted a lot of time looking this up.
They also conveniently cherry pick images that most resemble a cannabis leaf (hello the Ramses II wall relief), preferably ignoring high-resolution images that show incongruous details, like a circle or knob at the centre of the petals. This detail varies over 2500 years, but it is on most representations of the symbol.
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| Left and centre image are the earliest examples of her symbol, Old Kingdom. |
The identity of Seshat’s symbol is disputed within Egyptology, for sound reasons; as we are lacking a convenient explanation from an early text or images, but there is a good chance the same applies to Egyptian scribes and artists working after the Old Kingdom, because the symbol changes over time. By the New Kingdom they didn't know either.
Most academics favour the conclusion that it was originally based on a stylised flower or rosette placed on a pole, a few have also suggested a star on a pole, a stylised palm tree or a small hut viewed from above. Dagmar Budde, on the other hand, in her monograph on Seshat proposed that the symbol could be a writing instrument.
Whatever this headdress is, trying to make a stylised drawing from an ancient culture fit your model based on vague similarity to a handshaped leaf from a modern variety of psychoactive plant in the absence of any supporting evidence is unsound.
Altering colour to promote this argument is unethical.
What is more, if you are going to fish around looking for an appropriate goddess of intoxication, the goddess of divine bookkeeping is simply not that girl... the Egyptians had a goddess of ritual intoxication - Hathor.
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| Are you awake now? This monstrosity is from prntrkmt.org - 'Bast'. |
Modern reception artworks are not evidence, they are just manipulative window dressing.
There is currently no evidence from Egypt for knowledge or cultivation of the plant cannabis before the Roman period, all 10 claims discussed above are disputed, exaggerated or downright false.
There is no evidence from royal tombs, from ritual vessels, botanic remains and no secure evidence for use in mummification over a cultural time span of about 3000 years. Therefore, there is no evidence for a ritual or recreational use of the plant in Egypt.
It is common knowledge that the ancient Egyptians had a soft spot for specific intoxicants, like alcohol, and were happy to go into detail about these in their texts and art. Yet in pseudo-science, alcohol consumption and the fact that the Egyptians had a penchant for incense, are deftly employed to prop up the idea that cannabis could have been used in ritual.
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| Facepalm. |
What is most important however, is there is no confirmed term for cannabis from pharaonic Egypt, apart from one disputed proposal from 1934 that was nonetheless subsequently adopted in some publications on ancient medicine, translations of papyri and hieroglyphic lexica (bearing in mind that these latter may also state that it is disputed).
The proposal that the plant shemshemet is cannabis is more recently rejected by scholars of Egyptian medicine and botany, because research builds on knowledge, and over the passage of time weak, ethnocentric or unsound claims like this are weeded out.
This is incidentally why you should be wary of older publications, and of authors who cite older publications. I also might add that those academics who have not been cautious in their studies and in their assessment of the sources, must bear some responsibility for facilitating the spread of this myth.
Nonetheless, without confirmation and a consensus among experts that this plant is shemshemet every citation of cannabis from ancient Egyptian medicine is useless.
Andrea Sinclair
Sept 2022
PS: A year ago after presenting a paper at a conference I was asked why it was necessary to create false histories about psychoactives, and upon reflection I believe there are a few factors, the most important being - profit - many online Weed and pop history clickbait sites are selling a product or adspace, it helps to promote this with cool stories about humankind’s long history with drugs and their possible association with religion: pharaohs, arcane rituals and drugs are easy targets for revenue generation....
Sadly fairy tales about ancient Egypt sell way better than ‘disputed’.
Samorini, G. 2019. ‘The Oldest Archaeological Data Evidencing the Relationship of Homo Sapiens with Psychoactive Plants: A Worldwide Overview.’ Journal of Psychedelic Studies 3(2): 63-8.
Scholars who reject the identification of cannabis in Egypt before the Roman period
Scholars most cited for cannabis in ancient Egypt
Bibliography of misinformation
And many more
