Study (Open Access)

Snippet from IFL article:

“This study presents the clearest comprehensive evidence yet that opiates were a broader part of ancient Egyptian society and mark the first time that the contents of an inscribed Egyptian alabastron have been identified through scientific techniques,” write the authors of a new study about the artifact.

Housed in the Yale Peabody Museum’s Babylonian Collection, the piece in question is an alabaster vase inscribed in four ancient languages – including Akkadian, Elamite, Persian, and Egyptian – and bears the name of the fifth-century BCE Persian ruler Xerxes I, along with his title of “Great King”.