Did Ancient Hebrews Get High During Temple? A New Archaeological Discovery Suggests They Did

Archaeologists confirm what your Jewish friends already suspected: ancient religious services were way more fun.

Sarah Cascone, May 29, 2020



Frontal view of the cella, or holy of holies, of the shrine at Arad, as rebuilt in the Israel Museum from the original archaeological finds. Photo courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority, ©the Israel Museum, by Laura Lachman.

Frankincense, myrrh, and… cannabis? Archaeologists have discovered traces of weed on an ancient Israelite altar, suggesting that getting high was a religious ritual for the Hebrew people.

The discovery was made using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry testing on an Iron Age Judahite shrine at Tel Arad, in Israel’s Negev desert. The cannabis altar was in the inner sanctum of the temple, known as the cella, or holy of holies.

“We know from all around the Ancient Near East and around the world that many cultures used hallucinogenic materials and ingredients in order to get into some kind of religious ecstasy,” Eran Arie, curator of Iron Age and Persian Periods archaeology in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem told CNN. “We never thought about Judah taking part in these cultic practices. The fact that we found cannabis in an official cult place of Judah says something new.”

Arie published a report on his findings in the Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University with independent researcher Baruch Rosen and Dvory Namdar, a chemist and archaeologist from the Volcani agricultural research center.

More:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/archaeologists-discover-cannabis-biblical-site-1874790