Ancient Egyptian Vase Reveals Earliest Strong Evidence of Widespread Opium Use!
A new scientific study has shed remarkable light on the role of opium in ancient Egyptian life. Researchers from the Yale Ancient Pharmacology Program (YAPP) have analysed an inscribed alabaster vase from the Yale Babylonian Collection and discovered clear chemical traces of opiates inside it. This marks the first time the contents of an inscribed Egyptian alabastron have been confirmed through scientific testing, offering the most compelling evidence so far that opium use was more widespread than previously thought.
The vessel, carved from Egyptian calcite, is one of the few examples to survive intact. It bears inscriptions in four ancient languages dedicating it to Xerxes I, the Achaemenid ruler who governed from 486 to 465 BCE. Although more than 2,500 years old, the inside of the vase still held dark, aromatic material. Using innovative, non-destructive sampling techniques, YAPP researchers were able to extract and analyse these residues.
Their tests identified several compounds strongly linked with opium, including morphine, thebaine, papaverine, noscapine and hydrocotarnine. According to the team, this pattern of residues points firmly to the production, storage and use of opiates, suggesting that these alabaster vessels were specifically associated with such substances rather than, as long assumed, cosmetics or perfume.
Photo Credit: Yale University
The findings also support earlier research from Flinders Petrie’s excavations at Sedment in Egypt, where opiate residues were detected in Cypriot juglets and simple alabaster containers found in an ordinary burial. Together, the evidence now spans both elite and everyday settings across Achaemenid-period Mesopotamia and provincial Egypt.
The Achaemenid Empire, one of the great dynasties of ancient Iran, once controlled a vast region stretching from the Mediterranean to Central Asia, with Egypt serving as a key province. This wider geopolitical context may have helped facilitate the movement and cultural significance of opium across the Near East.
Researchers also suggest that calcite was intentionally chosen for these vessels. Its appearance and distinctive lustre may have carried symbolic associations, acting almost like a recognisable sign of a particular cultural or ritual practice, much like the way specific paraphernalia is tied to tobacco use today.
These insights could have major implications for the famous alabaster vessels found in Tutankhamun’s tomb. Many of those containers once held dark, sticky substances that early 20th-century chemical tests failed to identify. Some were even carefully scraped out by ancient looters, hinting at the high value of whatever they originally contained.
With growing evidence that opium was stored in similar vessels over a span of more than a thousand years, scholars now consider it increasingly plausible that at least some of Tutankhamun’s jars also held opiate-based materials.
The Yale team is continuing its investigations using further analytical techniques, including pXRF and pFTIR, and comparing samples to known calcite sources from the Hatnub quarries in Egypt. Their goal is to build a clearer understanding of how opium circulated in the ancient world, how it was prepared, and why particular vessel types became so closely linked with its use.
This emerging picture not only rewrites aspects of ancient Egyptian daily life and ritual practice but also opens a new chapter in our understanding of the long and complex history of human interaction with opiates.