Talk:Beit Shemesh family tomb
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Beit Shemesh family tomb covers the 4th-century family tomb at Beit Shemesh in which burnt material containing Δ6-THC was found with the skeleton of a girl who died in childbirth: the burial, the analyses and the reading of the find.
Data verification
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Discussion
Sources
- Zias, Stark, Seligman, Levy, Werker, Breuer and Mechoulam (1993), Nature 363: 215, a one-page letter: the tomb, the coins, the skeletons, the pelvic measurement, the microscopy and the chemical analysis, and the interpretation. Crossref and the Nature website print the first author's name as "Zlas"; the printed letter has Joe Zias.
- Prioreschi and Babin replied to the letter in Nature 364 (1993): 680.
Title and dates
- The letter calls the site "an undisturbed family burial tomb in Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem". It gives no excavation date, excavator or tomb number, and no coordinates.
- The date range, 315 to 392 CE, is that of three bronze coins found in the tomb; it dates the use of the tomb, not the burnt material itself.
Points to note
- What was identified. The chemistry found Δ6-THC, which the authors call a minor and highly stable constituent of cannabis, formed from Δ1-THC and cannabidiol after acid catalysis, apparently during burning. Microscopy at the Hebrew University found what appeared to be reed and minute amounts of carbonised fruit or seed, and the police laboratory's microscopy suggested only the possible presence of cannabis.
- How the material was used. The letter states the inhalant reading as an assumption ("We assume that the ashes found in the tomb were cannabis, burned in a vessel and administered to the young girl as an inhalant").
- Retellings. Arie, Rosen and Namdar (2020) place the burial "in Jerusalem" and describe "a juglet with black material in it" near the skeletons; the letter describes carbonised material in the abdominal area. The article follows the letter.
Georeferencing
No point is given. The letter that reports the find places the tomb only in Beit Shemesh, and no gazetteer holds the tomb itself: Wikidata, OpenStreetMap and Pleiades give points only for the modern town and for the Bronze Age tell, and neither is the tomb. Éloise 23:06, 29 October 2026 (+07)