Cannabis and Frankincense at the Judahite Shrine of Arad | Hacker News Reader

Cannabis and Frankincense at the Judahite Shrine of Arad

tandfonline.com

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From The Histories of Herodotus (d.424 BC):

"Hemp grows in Scythia: it is very like flax; only that it is a much coarser and taller plant: some grows wild about the country, some is produced by cultivation: the Thracians make garments of it which closely resemble linen; so much so, indeed, that if a person has never seen hemp he is sure to think they are linen, and if he has, unless he is very experienced in such matters, he will not know of which material they are. The Scythians, as I said, take some of this hemp-seed, and, creeping under the felt coverings, throw it upon the red-hot stones; immediately it smokes, and gives out such a vapour as no Grecian vapour-bath can exceed; the Scyths, delighted, shout for joy"

Cannabis seeds and hemp seeds don’t contain thc

It was most likely the flowers of a female plant (that contain the seed) that were thrown on the rocks.

Also, hemp == cannabis.

> Also, hemp == cannabis.

Sure, but plants grown primarily for it's fibers wouldn't have anyting near the THC levels of the skunk mutants grown for narcotic use today

I know people in the industry, and hemp with significant amounts of THC commonly occurs. Unless people in the past were selecting for low THC on purpose, it's likely that THC content in hemp fluctuated and was significant enough to smoke.

I've also purchased hemp for the purposes of consuming CBD, and it got me high.

Cannabis extracts like charas - hash that is made from the resin have been around for thousands of years, and are way more potent than "narcotic skunk mutants".

So? Clearly they venerated the plant no matter what.

How reliable do you think a translation from over 2 millennia ago is?

Herodotus wasn't known for his slavish accuracy, if you know what I mean.

Well, this is at least pretty clear evidence that he didn't inhale.

And besides, it also suggests why any interested readers in the past 2400 years would have been disappointed by the technique and not passed on the know how.

> Two limestone monoliths, interpreted as altars, were found in the Judahite shrine at Tel Arad. Unidentified dark material preserved on their upper surfaces was submitted for organic residue analysis at two unrelated laboratories that used similar established extraction methods. On the smaller altar, residues of cannabinoids such as Δ9-teterahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN) were detected, along with an assortment of terpenes and terpenoids, suggesting that cannabis inflorescences had been burnt on it. Organic residues attributed to animal dung were also found, suggesting that the cannabis resin had been mixed with dung to enable mild heating. The larger altar contained an assemblage of indicative triterpenes such as boswellic acid and norursatriene, which derives from frankincense. The additional presence of animal fat―in related compounds such as testosterone, androstene and cholesterol―suggests that resin was mixed with it to facilitate evaporation. These well-preserved residues shed new light on the use of 8th century Arad altars and on incense offerings in Judah during the Iron Age.

After all that I was expecting a description of carvings depicting a figure with demonic wings and tentacles or snakes on its face. I was a little disappointed.

Ha. Well, they were probably smoking mellow weed plucked from the ground, as opposed to modern day laboratory high THC weed.

But they were smoking it mixed with dung. Sounds just right for a death cult of a mad god to me... :)

Oh true. Sounds magical, man.

Danny Nemu has an interesting paper on entheogens in the Old Testament.

https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/3/Special-Issue/ar...

And a lighter article looking at Frankincense in particular.

http://psypressuk.com/2016/12/22/three-kings-orient-drug-run...

Smoking cannabis in pipes occurred only after Columbus and the import of tobacco. I find that a little shocking, especially in India, where cannabis has religious value. Archeological work is sadly very rare in India... But if anyone finds an older chillum pipe, it will be a major discovery.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_India

I believe the use of cannabis in this particular ritual is referred to as the ancient practice of suffumigation. This practice goes fairly far back in the literature.

> Suffumigation, by definition, means "to fumigate from below." This practice involves herbal incenses burned for magical purposes and is used in Ceremonial Magic to attract certain spirits. When an object is consecrated, it is held in the smoke of the incense, thus suffumigating it.

(The Witch Book: The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, Wicca, and Neo-paganism)

I always felt that the burning of incense had to cannabis.

Burning a half lb bundle in a medium sized room of even low quality cannabis would feel like a spiritual moment.

According to the paper, it would have been imported as hash instead:

> In fact, no cannabis seeds or pollen remains are known from archaeological contexts in the Ancient Near East, as opposed to northeast China or southeast Russia, where all parts of the cannabis plant and seed were found at different archaeological sites and contexts and were dated as early as 2000 BCE (Jiang et al. 2016; Russo et al. 2008; Russo 2014). Therefore, we suggest that cannabis female inflorescences may have been imported from distant origins and were transported as dried resin (commonly known as hashish).

There's one reading of the recipe for Holy Anointing Oil that includes Cannabis, making the result basically a topical weed oil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_anointing_oil

I didn’t realise “The History of the World, Part 1” was actually a documentary.

The concept of rolling papyrus is perhaps not so far off then.

I picture the ceremonies being accompanied by chants about being "iron like a lion in Zion".

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