Tel Arad
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| Tel Arad | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 31.28, 35.13 |
| Site | |
| Type | Shrine or temple |
| Culture | Judahite |
| Period | Iron Age II |
| In use | Fortresses 9th to early 6th centuries BCE; shrine c. 760/750–715 BCE[1] |
| Excavated | 1962–1967[1] |
| Excavated by | Yohanan Aharoni, for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Ruth Amiran (co-director, first season) |
| Cannabis finds | |
| Found | Residue |
| Cannabinoids in the dark residue on the smaller of two limestone altars | |
| Dated | c. 760–715 BCE |
| Dating | Stratigraphy, Typology |
| Identified by | Chemical analysis |
| Held by | Israel Museum; Israel Antiquities Authority |
Tel Arad is an archaeological mound in the Beersheba Valley in southern Israel. Its fortress mound held a series of fortresses of the Kingdom of Judah guarding its southern border. A small shrine inside the fortress contained two limestone altars. Organic residue analysis of the dark material on the smaller altar detected cannabinoids. Eran Arie, Baruch Rosen and Dvory Namdar, who published the analysis in 2020, read the residue as cannabis burnt in the shrine in the 8th century BCE.[1]
Fortress and shrine
The fortress mound was excavated between 1962 and 1967 for the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by Yohanan Aharoni, with Ruth Amiran as co-director in the first season. The excavation revealed six phases (Strata XI to VI) of two fortresses built one over the other and dated from the 9th to the early 6th centuries BCE.[1]
Aharoni found the shrine's inner room in 1963, and the rest of the building was uncovered in 1964 and 1965. It stood in the north-western corner of the fortress, measured about 13 by 20 metres and had an open courtyard with a sacrificial altar of fieldstones, a storage area, a broad main hall and a small cella, the debir or Holy of Holies, at its western end.[1] Aharoni assigned the shrine to five building phases spanning about 350 years. Herzog later argued that it was used in two strata only, X and IX, which he and Singer-Avitz dated from about 760/750 to about 715 BCE.[1]
The two altars lay on the second step between the main hall and the cella. They had been laid down carefully, facing north, in a pit cut through the upper floor of the cella. The smaller altar is 40 centimetres high with a top of 20 by 21 centimetres, the larger 52 centimetres high with a top of 29.7 by 29.7 centimetres. Each top has a shallow hollow with a round heap of black, solidified organic material at its centre.[1] The steps, floor and furniture of the cella were moved to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where they have been displayed since the museum opened in 1965.[1]
Residue analysis
In the 1960s the dark material was sent to the Department of Biochemistry of the Hebrew University. The result did not establish what the substance was; Gad Avigad, who examined it, suggested by elimination that it contained animal fat.[1]
The rebuilding of the Israel Museum's archaeology wing between 2007 and 2010 prompted new analyses. Samples of five milligrams or less were taken from the lower part of each heap. Sampling was done twice and the extracts were analysed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) in two laboratories, at the Technion in Haifa and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A blank was run with each batch to watch for contamination in the laboratory.[1]
On the smaller altar the authors report that "Cannabidiol (CBD), trans-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and its degradation by-product cannabinol (CBN) were detected in the black heap of organic remains".[1] With the cannabinoids came mono- and sesquiterpenes, among them borneol, α-farnesene and β-caryophyllene. The authors note that none of these terpenes is unique to cannabis but that most of them are produced in quantity by its flowering heads.[1] Fatty acids in which stearic acid exceeds palmitic acid, with cholesterol and testosterone derivatives, pointed to animal fat; urea and a coprostanol derivative "may suggest that mammalian feces was in contact with the upper surface of the altar, either during use or after the altar was buried".[1]
The larger altar carried triterpenes including boswellic acids and norursatriene, which the authors identified as frankincense, together with animal fat.[1] The blanks held only palmitic and stearic acids, in the reverse ratio. The two altars gave different sets of compounds, from which the authors excluded contamination during processing. Pollen screening of both altars found no preserved plant material.[1]
Interpretation
Arie, Rosen and Namdar concluded that cannabis "substance was mixed with animal dung to enable its mild heating" on the smaller altar and frankincense mixed with animal fat on the larger. They related the two fuels to the two materials. For cannabis, "The temperature required for decarboxylation of the cannabis phytocannabinoids into their neutral and active form is mild, not exceeding 150 °C", which burning dung can give; frankincense needs about 260 °C, which fat can reach and hold.[1] Because the terpenes found are common in local plants, they argued that the cannabis was brought for its psychoactive effect. They judged it likely that cannabis "was used at Arad as a deliberate psychoactive, to stimulate ecstasy as part of cultic ceremonies".[1]
Noting that no cannabis seeds or pollen are known from archaeological contexts in the ancient Near East, they suggested that the flowering heads were imported from far away, as dried resin or hashish.[1] They called Arad "the earliest evidence for the use of cannabis in the Ancient Near East" and the first evidence of a hallucinogenic substance in the Kingdom of Judah.[1]
The finds also bear on the use of the stone altars of the southern Levant, which most scholars had called incense altars without direct evidence of incense. The authors held that their results justify the name. They read the two altars as two kinds of incense rather than two deities. They took the good preservation of the residues to support the view that the altars were buried on purpose when the shrine went out of use.[1]