New Study Suggests Opium May Have Been a Common Part of Daily Life in Ancient Egypt

Opium and Ancient Egypt: Chemical Evidence Points to Widespread Use

Recent chemical analysis of a roughly 2,500‑year‑old calcite alabaster vessel suggests that opium was more than an occasional substance in ancient Egypt — it may have been used regularly across social classes. The findings, published in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology, add to earlier residue studies and historical notes to give a clearer picture of how organic substances were used in daily and elite contexts.

“Our findings, combined with prior research, indicate that opium use was more than accidental or sporadic in ancient Egyptian cultures and surrounding lands. [It] was, to some degree, a fixture of daily life,”

Andrew Koh, a researcher at the Yale Peabody Museum, said in a university statement.

The vessel Koh examined is one of fewer than ten intact examples of its type found at excavation sites worldwide. Made of calcite alabaster, the object bears inscriptions in four languages — Egyptian, Akkadian, Elamite and Persian — and the text references Xerxes I, who ruled the Achaemenid Empire from approximately 486–465 BCE. Similar vessels have been recovered from a range of sites, including material associated with the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

Koh first noticed a dark brown, aromatic residue inside the vase. Follow‑up chemical testing identified several opiate alkaloids — noscapine, thebaine, papaverine, hydrocotarnine and morphine — which the authors describe as clear biomarkers of opium. The team emphasizes that this find complements prior evidence, such as residues detected in jugs from a New Kingdom (roughly 16th–11th centuries BCE) merchant tomb.

The authors also revisit early lab notes from chemist Alfred Lucas, who worked on Howard Carter’s excavation of King Tutankhamun’s tomb and, in 1933, recorded sticky, dark organic deposits in similar alabaster containers that he did not identify as perfumes or oils. Taken together, these lines of evidence suggest that opiate substances were known and used across different social contexts in antiquity.

While the chemical signatures are strong indicators of opium, researchers caution that residue analysis alone cannot fully determine how the substance was used — medicinally, ritually, recreationally, or some combination. Koh and colleagues plan further targeted analyses of related artifacts now housed in the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza to better establish the prevalence, contexts and cultural meanings of opiate use in the ancient Near East.

Note: These findings change our understanding of everyday life in the ancient world but do not by themselves prove that opium consumption was universally habitual. They do, however, support the idea that opiate use was embedded in both elite and ordinary practices over long periods.