Shamans
are what used to be called medicine men and women, natural-born psychics
who are nevertheless highly trained to interpret dreams, heal the sick
and guide people through knowl�edge that comes to them during their ecstatic
trances. They are found in what are generally taken to be 'primitive'
tribal societies, from Siberia to the Amazonian rain forest. These adepts
take shamanic 'flights' out of the body into the realms normally inac�cessible
to mankind and return with" specific information of great practical
use.
In
1995 a remarkable book was published in Switzerland enti�tled Le serpent
cosmique, l'ADN et les origines du savior (The Cosmic Serpent, DNA and
the Origins of Knowledge) by Swiss anthropologist Jeremy Narby. (It
was first published in English in 1998.) It presents the results of Narby's
personal study of Amazonian shamans, and reveals the remarkable scope
of the information shamans glean during the ecstatic trances they induce
by taking natural hallucinogenic substances, primarily one
called ayahuasca. From this research, Narby developed
a /
Page342 / theory
about the origins;of that knowledge that - we believe - has enormous
significance for an investigation of the mysteries of ancient
Egypt.
In
the mid-t980s Narby was studying for his doctorate among the indigenous
people of the Peruvian Amazon, working on an enviromental project. Like
many before him he soon became
fascinated by the astounding botanical knowledge of these so called
'primilitive' people, specifically their medicinal use of certain rare
plants. He was impressed by the range of plant�derived mediciines used
by the tribal shamans - ayahuasqueros �
and by their effectiveness, especially after they cured a long
- standing back problem which European doctors had proved completely incapable
of treating. The more he learned, the more intrigued he became about
the ways in which the Amazonian natives, had developed or acquired this
knowledge. The odds against them coming up with even one of these recipes
by chance or
even by experimentation are simply overwhelming. There are some
80,000
species of plants in
the Amazonian rain forest, so to discover an effective remedy using a
mixture of just two of them would theoretically require the testing of
every possible combi�nation - about 3,700,000,000 It does not end
there: many of their medicines involve several plants, and even then such
a cal�culation does not allow for experimentation with the often extremely
complex procedures necessary to extract the active
ingrediants and produce a potent mixture
One
good example
of this mysterious medicinal knowledge is ayahuasca itself, a combination
of just two plants. The first come from the leaves of a shrub and contains
a hormone naturally sectreted in the human brain, dimethyltryptamine a
powerful hal-ucinogen only discovered by Western science in 1979. If taken
orally, though, it is broken down by an enzyme in the stomach and becomes
totally ineffective, so the second component of ayahuasca, extracted from
a creeper, contains several substances that protect the dimethyltryptamine
from that specific enzyme;
In
effect, ayahuasca is a designer drug, made to order. It is as if the exact
requirements of the mixture were specified in / Page
343 / advance,
then the correct ingredients chosen to meet the require�ments. But how?
How could anyone, even sophisticated Westem botanists, have found the
perfect ingredients without spending decades - perhaps even centuries
- on trial and error? How can the 'primitive' Amazonian natives have known
the properties of these two plants? After all, the odds against them coming
up with this combination by accident are truly astronomical. As Narby
writes
So
here are people without electron microscopes who choose, among some 80,000
Amazonian plant species, the leaves of a bush containing a hallucinogenic
brain hormone, which they combine with a vine containing substances that�inactivate
an enzyme of the digestive tract, which would. otherwise block the hallucinogenic
effect. And they do this to modify their consciousness.
It
is as if
they' knew about the molecular properties of plants and the art
of combining them, and when one asks them how they know these things,
they say their knowledge comes directly from hallucinogenic plants.1
Another
example given by Narby is that of curare.2
This pow�erful nerve poison is another 'made-to-order' drug, whose ingredients
this time come from several different plants and fit a very precise set
of requirements. As Narby points out, the natives needed a substance that,
when smeared on the tips of blowpipe darts, would not only kill the animal
but also ensure that it would fall to the ground.. Tree monkeys, for example,
if shot with an unpoisoned arrow, often tighten their grip on the branches
with a reflex action and so die out of reach of the hunter. The meat itself
would, of course, have to be free from poison and safe to eat. It seemed
like a very tall order, but curare fits all these require�ments: it is
a muscle relaxant (killing by arresting the respiratory muscles); it is
only effective when injected into the bloodstream�hence its delivery by
blowpipe; and it has no effect when taken orally.
Page
344
The
invention of curare is a truly astounding thing. The most common type
requires a complex method of preparation in which several plants are boiled
for three days, during which lethal fumes are produced. And the final
result needs a specific piece of technology - the blowpipe - to deliver
it. How was all this dis�covered
in the first place?
The
problem becomes even more baffling when it is realised that forty different
types of curare are used across the Amazon rain forest, all with the same
properties but each using slightly different ingredients as the same plants
do not grow in every region. Therefore, in effect, curare was invented
forty times. The Western world only learned of it in the 1940s, when it
first began to be used as a muscle relaxant during surgery.
The
Amazonians themselves do not claim to have invented�curare, but that it
was given to them by the spirits, through their shamans.
These
are just two examples from a vast range of vegetable mixtures used by
the peoples of the Amazon, the full extent of which has not yet been catalogued
by modern botanists. Realising that it was nonsense to suggest that these
complex recipes could have been achieved by experimentation, Narby began
to ask local people and shamans how they had acquired this knowledge.
They told him that the properties of plants and the recipes for combining
them are given directly to the shaman by very powerful spirit entities
while he is in ecstatic trance under the influence of hallucinogens such
as ayahuasca. (Of course this raises a fascinating chicken-and-egg type
of problem. If the shamans discovered the secret properties of ayahuasca
only by ingesting it, how did they know about them in the first place
?)
This
realisation led Narby on to his own personal quest to research this neglected
aspect of shamanism, which included taking ayahuasca himself. Many anthropologists
before Narby had recorded the claim that the shaman obtains knowledge
by the ingestion of hallucinogens, but none had ever taken this seriously
enough to follow it up. He found that this was a shared feature of
Page
345 / shamanism
across, the world and that the tribes ascribe the ori�gins and the
techniques of their culture to knowledge gleaned by their shamans while
in ecstatic trance, during which they encounter guiding entities
who teach them.
Narby
himself, on his first experience with ayahuasca, encoun�tered 'a pair
of giganticsnakes that lectured him on his insignificance as a human
being and the limits of his knowledge, which turned out to be an important
personal turning point. He began to question his Western preconceptions
and approached his subsequent studies in a more open-minded and less scientif�ically
arroganfway. His own book is itself an example of the way in which the
shamanic experience can impart new knowledge. Narby writes that the serpents
induced thoughts in his mind that he was incapable of having himself.3
The
properties and methods of combining plants to achieve specific results
are not the only things communicated through the trance state by spiritual
entities in this way. The Amazonian tribes ascribe their knowledge of
specific techniques, such as the art of weaving, and their mastery of
woodworking, to the same source. What the shamans receive while in trance
is useful knowledge that often, in the case of healing, actually saves
lives.
Aside
from the question of the reality of such entities, the very idea of obtaining
practical tips and actual information by such a method is, to our culture,
absurd. Tliere are, surely, only two ways of obtaining knowledge: it is
either worked out in logical steps by experiment or trial-and-error; or
it is taught by someone who, or some other culture which, has already
worked it out.
This,
in a nutshell, forms the problem of the origins of the knowledge of the
ancient Egyptians, such as how they built the 'impossible' Great
Pyramid. Techniques appeared to come out of nowhere, without any apparent
process of logical or historical development. Since no archaeological
evidence of stage-by-stage technological development has been found, it
can be assumed that the process never occurred. This may seem crazy, but
where are all the failed pyramids 'predating those of the Old Kingdom?
The only alternative seems to be that the ancient Egyptians / Page 346
/ learned
their techniques whole and fully formed from somebody else -
a lost civilisation, or visiting extraterrestrials perhaps.
What
if there is a third way of obtaining useful and unique information: the
way of the shaman, where knowledge is somehow obtained directly from its
source?
The
extraordinary botanical knowledge of the Amazonian peo�ples forms, in
fact, an exact parallel to the building expertise of the ancient Egyptians.
Not only should it lie beyond the skills of their time and place, but
it also stands far in advance of today's scientific knowledge.
Questions
and answers
Shamanism
is considered to be a phenomenon of primitive soci�eties, those who still
live at-roughly the level of the Stone Age while surrounded by the extreme
sophistication of the modern world. It was outgrown by the 'advanced'
cultures thousands of years ago. However, can we imagine that shamanic
rituals could be practised as a culture moved from primitive to advanced,
perhaps at an even more sophisticated level than is found in today's Amazonian
rain forest? If such a phenomenon could be con�ceived, what would be the
limits of the knowledge obtained through the shamans' curious art?
Several
writers have recently noted clear signs of shamanistic influence at work
in ancient Egypt. Andrew Collins, for example, has written of the shamanistic
nature of the 'Elder Culture' that he believes was responsible for the
great achievements of Egypt, but he has also surmised that they developed
the advanced tech�niques that enabled them to build the pyramids and carve
the Great Sphinx.4
Could the priesthood of Heliopolis have been in essence a college of shamans,
free to apply their closely guarded techniques for purposes of pure research?
Could the shamanic hypothesis explain how the pyramid builders knew how
to quarry, transport, shape and position immense blocks of stone, among
many other baffling examples of their knowledge?
Page
347
This
would also account for an aspect of the ancient Egyptians' knowledge that
has not been properly explored -
its curiously selective nature. While they are justly famed for their
mysterious expertise in pyramid building, there are certain areas that
- per�haps
bizarrely - appear to have been unknown arts to
them. We
have noted that, despite "the use of colossal granite and lime�stone
blocks and the extraordinary skill used in shaping them, the walls of
the Valley Temple at Giza Have been built in an oddly primitive way. And
one sophisticated architectural feature com�pletely missing in ancient
Egypt was the arch. Perhaps this is because the development of the arch
requires a conceptual leap, and its construction requires a theoretical
knowledge of weight distribution: Maybe this is also the reason why the
Egyptians do not seem to have mastered the art of bridge-building.
Recently
French Egyptologist Jean Kerisel has argued per�suasively
that cracks in the granite slabs forming the ceiling of the King's Chamber
were not, as previously-thought, the result of an earthquake, but happened
while the Great Pyramid was actu�ally under construction.5
This, he suggests, was because the builders did not understand
the consequences of working with two materials limestove and granite -
of different composition, which would compress at different rates under
the enormous weight of stonepressingdown on them. (If Kerisel is correct,
this would also cast
doubt on the theory that the cavities above the' King's Chamber were intended
as stress-relieving chambers for the building.)
We
have observed the Amazonian shaman's receive spe�cific answers to specific
questions, such as the herbal recipe for the cure for a specific illness,
but rarely more or less than is needed. The same appears to be true of
the Egyptians, who appear to have had information only about, for example,
ways of moving huge blocks of stone. Because bridges and arches needed
new concepts of building, they never asked the right questions in order
to be told how to build them.
Could
this be how the Dogon have such otherwise inexplicable knowledge of the
Sirius system? If the Amazonian shamans can / Page 348 /
They talk of a ladder
- or a vine, a rope, a spiral
staircase, a twisted rope ladder - that connects heaven and earth and
which they use to gain access to the world of spirits. They consider these
spirits have come from the sky and to have created life on earth. 7
This
imagery is found in the ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. For example, in
Utterance 478
-
which speaks of Isis
as the person�ification of the ladder - it says:
As
for any spirit or any god who will help me when I ascend to the sky on
the ladder of the god; my bones are assembled for me, my limbs are gathered
together for me, and I leap up to the sky in the presence of the god of
the Lord of the ladder.8"
| I |
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READ
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27 |
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RE ADD |
32 |
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9 |
9 |
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DAD |
9 |
9 |
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And
another utterance says:
A
ladder is knotted together by Re before Osiris, a ladder
is knotted together by Horns before his father Osiris when he goes
to his spirit, one of them being on this side and one of them being on
that, while I am between them.9
Ascension
to the Milky Way is a central theme of the Pyramid Texts; in Colombia
the ayahuasca vine is known as the 'ladder to the Milky Way'.10
Recognising
the concept of shamanism in the Pyramid Texts radically changes
our understanding of the ancient Egyptians and their religion - and
perhaps even the whole nature of human potential. Could it
be that the central 'ascension of the king' is not the description
of his afterlife journey as is always believed, but the shamanic
flight to the 'otherworld' - the realm of guiding spirits - that is undertaken
in life? The two are not mutually exclusive, for the shamans know
that the realm they enter when entranced
is the portal to the eternal world of light where the spirits of the dead
are taken, so the Pyramid Texts
/ Page
350 / can
be read as a description of both the shamanic and afterlife journeys.
Traditionally, the journeying shaman is believed to have actually
died, to be resurrected when his soul returns.
Although
shamans are very special people, born with a natural psychic gift, they
are nevertheless required to undergo fearsome initiations by ordeal, the
horrors of which impinge on both the physical and spiritual levels.
A classic feature of the shamanic initiation is a hellish out-of-the-body
experience in which they appear to be torn limb from limb, after which
they are magically reassembled. As Stanislav Grof writes:
"The
career of many shamans start by the powerful experi�ences of unusual states
of consciousness with the sense of going into the underworld, being attacked,
dismembered, and then being put back together, and ascending to the supernal
realm.11
This
is strikingly reminiscent of the story of Osiris, with whom the
king in the Pyramid Texts is identified, who is cut into pieces by the
evil god Set, but magically reassembled by his lover Isis
in order to father the hawk god Horus, who is in turn regarded
as the reincarnation of Osiris as well as his son. As we have seen
in the extract from Utterance 478, Isis is identified with the legendary
ladder, up which the reassembled king climbs to heaven �
clearly, a classic shamanic
image.
The
role of Isis is particularly interesting because it portrays the
feminine principle as being essential to the shamanic journey.
In fact, the whole concept of female initiates has been sadly neg�lected,
but perhaps for unexpected reasons. At a London conference in October
1996 called The Incident, Jeremy Narby was questioned on why all the shamans
he had mentioned in his talk were men. He replied that specially selected
women often sit with the ayahuasqueros as, fuelled with the drug,
they embark on their out-of-the-body adventures. The women actually accom�pany
them and share in their experience, and afterwards, when !hey have returned
to normal consciousness, help them to / Page 351 / remember
what took place in those other realms. But the impor�tant
point is that the women do all this without taking
ayahuasca.
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AYAHUASQUEROS |
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AYAHUASQUEROS |
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AYA |
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HUA |
30 |
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UE |
26 |
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R |
18 |
9 |
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OS |
34 |
7 |
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AYAHUASQUEROS |
171 |
54 |
45 |
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AYAHUASQUEROS |
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Page 351 continues
Clearly,
the female companions of the shamans have no need of chemical aids for
their spiritual flights. Why is not known, pos�sibly because women's roles
have traditionally been of less interest to anthropologists.
The
mathematician, cyberneticist and mythologist Charles Muses has written
extensively on shamanism. (As with most of his non-New Age / mystical
writings under the pseudonym of 'Musaios', these are particularly incisive
and persuasive.) He has noted the nature of its essential significance:
The
point of shamanism is really not ecstasy, 'archaic' or otherwise, or even
'healing', but rather the development of communication with a community
of higher than human beings and a modus operandi for attaining an eventual
transmutation to more exalted states and paths.12
Muses
goes on to make the explicit parallel between this, the underlying objective
of shamanism, and the religion of ancient Egypt. He equates the Duat -
the afterlife realm to which the king travels - of the Pyramid Texts,
not with a mythical otherworld but with the Tibetan Bardo, where spirits
live between incarnations and which certain special people can visit during
life.
The
Pyramid Texts also speak of the 'deceased' being trans�formed into a 'body
of light' (aker), which again may imply more than a straightforward
afterlife existence. Charles Muses says: ,'The acquisition of a higher
body by an individual-meant also, by that very token, the possibility
of communicating with beings already so endowed.'14
In other words, anyone with a higher body can communicate with anyone
else who exists in the light., Shamans, during their trips to the invisible
realm, can make con�tact with all the higher beings who live there.
In
our opinion, Jeremy Narby's ground-breaking work on shamanism has important
implications for some of the recent / Page 352 /
theories concerning the origins
of Egyptian wisdom, particularly those of the 'ancient astronaut' school.
Proponents of such hypotheses, such as Alan F. Alford, tend to treat the
myths and religious writings, such as the Pyramid Texts, in an excessively
literal way. When the ancients tell us of meetings with part�animal, part-man
entities, who descend to Earth or to whom the priest ascends, and who
impart specific information, such researchers assume these to be garbled
stories of actual meetings with exotic beings from outer space, making
gods of astronauts.
Shamans
living in the Amazonian rain forest today regularly describe identical
experiences - sometimes under the
watchful gaze of anthropologists - without the least suggestion of a descending
spaceship or visitors from a lost continent.
But
who are the entities from whom shamans have always received their invaluable
knowledge?
It
is possible that we will never be able to answer that question fully.
Even shamans know that some mysteries and secrets are never meant to be
understood. But once again, the work of Jeremy Narby may provide certain
exciting clues about what it is that shamans - from ancient Heliopolis
to today - tap into when they enter
their exalted states of consciousness.
Narby
noted that the visions of shamans across the world shared certain key
images, the most fundamental being that of twin serpents that live inside
every creature. The penny finally dropped for him when he read about Michael
Harner's experience in 1961. He saw winged, dragonlike creatures who explained
to him that they 'had created life on the planet in order to hide within
the multitudinous forms. . . I learned that the dragon-like creatures
were thus inside all forms of life, including man' .15
Harner
himself wrote that 'one could say they were almost like DNA', but
added that he had no Idea where the vision came from -
certainly not from his own mind, as at that time he knew nothing about
DNA. Whatever the origin of the words, this was to be a major inspiration:
Narby realised that the image of 'ser�pents' living inside every living
thing is, in fact, an excellent description of the strands of DNA.
ANDDNAANDDNAANDDNAANDDNAANDDNAANDDNA
Page
353
Shamans
ascribe the source of their remarkable knowledge to these twin serpents,
like the two Narby himself encountered. Could it be that the 'primitive'
belief that all living things are ani�mated by the same single principle,
described in this ubiquitous serpentine imagery, is actually correct and
that what it has always described is DNA? Narby cites numerous examples,
from ancient myths and the shamanistic lore of 'primitive' cultures from
Peru to Australia,
to support his superb connection between the ser- pents and DNA.
The
shamans insist that the 'serpents' possess consciousness and that they
enter into real dialogue with them.The shamans are, in reality, somehow
communicating with DNA, the implication is that it must be intelligent:
the DNA of the ayahuasca plants, for example, must 'know' its own properties,
but will only impart them to the shaman in answer to specific questions.
This means that the DNA has to understand the question and be able to
communicate with the shaman's own DNA. Can the DNA of one individual living
creature really communicate with that of another?
Narby"s
theory still has a long way to go. For example, it is hard to see how
intelligent DNA can explain the knowledge the shamans receive about specific
techniques, such as weaving or mixing curare. The important achievement
is that he has shown that shamans derive usable information by mental
contact with some nonhuman source. And they do appear to be in touch with
the 'gods', or at least some strange beings who exist in another dimension
and share their undoubted
powers with them.
Another
very significant aspect of Narby's research is his iden�tification of
a common feature throughout the shamanistic cultures (and ancient myths):.
divine twins as the bringers of wisdom, 'the theme of double beings of
celestial origin and cre�ators of life' .16 He points out, for example,
quoting from Claude Levi-Strauss, that the Aztec word coatl, as
in the name Quetzalcoatl, mean both 'snake' and 'twin' (Quetzalcoatl
can be interpreted as either 'feathered serpent' or 'magnificent
twin'.) Narby believes that the 'twin serpents' so often encountered during
shamanic flights and which he himself experienced / Page 354 / represent
the two strands of the double helix of DNA,"
| 12 |
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Page 354 (Continues)
"This
reminds us of the two sets of twins in the Heliopolitan religion (Isis
and Osiris, Nepthys and Set) as well as the Nommo of the Dogon, as described
in Robert Temple's The Sirius Mystery, who are also made up of sets of
twins and descend to earth to civilise mankind.18
Again, Narby's shamanic theory provides an elegant �and, in our view, much more plausible- alternative to the ubiq�uitous
'ancient astronaut' explanation for these myths.
Perhaps
DNA has other secrets to impart. The genetic code in the human genome
is made up of just 3 per cent of its total DNA - the function of the rest
is unknown, and is officially termed 'junk DNA'. Narby suggests that a
better term would be 'mystery DNA'.19
How many 'miracles' and how much potential does the other 97 per cent
encompass?
'Spirits
from the sky'
Narby's
ideas about DNA and shamanism throw a completely new light on hitherto
intractable historical mysteries. Were the outline drawings of animals
and birds on the sands of Nazca in Peru meant to be guides to and celebrations
of the shaman's flight? Did the Dogon discover the secrets of Sirius simply
by asking their shamans' spirit guides? Were the massive stone blocks
that make up the giant pyramids of Egypt manoeuvred into place according
to the advice of the 'gods' visited by their priests in trance?
Significantly
the flight of the shaman also enables him to visit far
distant places and later describe what he saw and heard there �
in other words, remote viewing.
This aspect of shamanism partic�ularly intrigued anthropologist Kenneth
Kensinger, who tested it among the ayahuasqueros of the Amazon and found
that they were able to 'bring back' accurate information about distant
places, as well as tell him about the death of a relative before he heard
about it himself.20 (Andrija Puharich also studied the remote-viewing
potential of shamans, as described in Chapter 6.) / Page 355 / We
asked Jeremy Narby if he agreed with us that his ideas could account for
the extraordinary knowledge implicit in the building of the pyramids.
He pointed out that the Aztecs, Incas and Maya
had constructed comparable temples, and that 'the double serpent, or Quetzalcoatl,
or Viracocha, or whatever figure you take depending on the culture,
teaches about curing, healing and plants, but also about astronomy, building
techniques, tech�nology - arts and crafts in general. '21
| 5 |
AZTEC |
55 |
19 |
1 |
| 6 |
AZTECS |
74 |
20 |
2 |
|
|
|
|
|
| 4 |
INCA |
27 |
18 |
9 |
| 5 |
INCAS |
46 |
19 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
| 4 |
MAYA |
40 |
31 |
4 |
| 5 |
MAYAN |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 6 |
INDIAN |
51 |
33 |
6 |
| 4 |
RACE |
27 |
18 |
9 |
| 5 |
RACES |
46 |
19 |
1 |
| 12 |
QUETZALCOATL |
153 |
45 |
9 |
| 9 |
VIRACOCHA |
80 |
44 |
8 |
| 6 |
OSIRIS |
89 |
35 |
8 |
| 3 |
SET |
44 |
8 |
8 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
LORD PACAL
82 |
37
1 |
Page 355
"Narby was cautious about stepping outside
his field of spe�cialism. But was there really an ancient Egyptian equivalent
of
ayahuasca - and
if so, what was it? Synchronistically, the Channel 4 television series,
Sacred Weeds, went far in answering this question. This four-part series,
first shown in August 1998, featured the use of natural hallucinogens
in sacred practices such as shamanism. The final programme attempted to
redis�cover what some believed to be an ancient Egyptian ritual drug,
the blue waterlily.
Although
now very rare, this plant was commonly used both recreationally and ritually
by the ancient Egyptians. It is fre�quently depicted in wall paintings
and papyri, and even fobms the design of the pillars of the great temple
at Karnak. Egyptologists believed it to have been merely decorative, but
the programme set out to determine if it had a psychoactive effect, which
may well have been exploited in ancient Egypt. Interestingly, the lily
was specifically associated with Ra-Atum. Seeing the way the plant
flowers, shooting a long stem out of the water which then bursts into
an open flower, it is easy to see the symbolic association with Atum's
bursting forth from the primeval waters.
| R |
A |
|
A |
T |
U |
M |
| 18 |
1 |
|
1 |
20 |
21 |
13 |
| 1+8 |
|
|
|
2+0 |
2+1 |
1+3 |
| 9 |
1 |
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
| R |
A |
|
A |
T |
U |
M |
|
|
|
A |
T |
U |
M |
|
|
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
|
|
|
A |
T |
U |
M |
As
tested on two volunteers, an extract from the blue lily proved to have
the suspected narcotic effect. Towards
the end of the programme historian Michael Carmichael, an American living
in Oxford who is a specialist in the shamanic use of psychoactive plants,
discussed the possibility that, in higher doses, it could be used to induce
shamanic experiences.
We
contacted Carmichael, who worked with R. Gordon Wasson, one of the pioneers
of research into the shamanic
use of / Page 356 / drugs
(see Chapter 5). He told us that there is abundant evi�dence
for the use - of psychoactive drugs in ancient.Egypt, saying, 'there are
so many that I don't know where to begiin'.22 Several
are mentioned in the Ebers Papyrus (c.1500 BCE, the oldest known medical
text in the world). They are known to have included opium (imported
from Crete),- mandrake and cannabis. The psy�choactive
substances used by ancient cultures, includingeEgypt, have been studied
by several researchers. Little if anything of: this has found its way
into the Egyptological literature Because of its characteristic
extreme conservatism.23
| 5 |
OPIUM |
74 |
29 |
2 |
| 8 |
MANDRAKE |
67 |
31 |
4 |
| 8 |
CANNABIS |
63 |
27 |
9 |
| 7 |
HASHISH
72 |
36
9 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
HASHISH |
|
|
|
|
HA |
9 |
9 |
9 |
|
SH |
27 |
9 |
9 |
|
I |
9 |
9 |
9 |
|
SH |
27 |
9 |
9 |
| 7 |
HASHISH |
72 |
36 |
36 |
|
|
|
|
3+6 |
| 3 |
HIS |
36 |
18 |
9 |
4 |
HASH |
36 |
18 |
9 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4 |
HASH |
36 |
18 |
9 |
4 |
SHAH |
36 |
18 |
9 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
7 |
HASHISH |
72 |
36 |
9 |
| 5 |
RISHI |
63 |
36 |
9 |
| 4 |
ISHI |
45 |
27 |
9 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
I |
|
|
|
|
ME |
|
|
|
| 4 |
ISHI |
45 |
27 |
9 |
