Jerusalem (AFP)
Did the ancient Israelites smoke cannabis to get closer to God? Most likely, say Israeli researchers who recently discovered traces of cannabis on an ancient religious site in the kingdom of Judah.
The discovery has aroused media attention and interest on social networks in Israel for several days, a country where the police pride themselves each week in finding plants and cannabis traffickers. The therapeutic use of this plant is nevertheless authorized in the country.
According to a study published on May 28 by Tel Aviv University, this love of marijuana does not date from today but from the Bronze Age. Archaeologists, excavating the site of Tel Arad, located in the Negev desert, near the Dead Sea and the West Bank, discovered traces of incense, but also of cannabis.
On this site, used as a pilgrimage site in the 8th century BC, archaeologists looked at two altars.
However, "the discovery of cannabis on the smallest (altars) turned out to be a surprise. Such Arad makes it possible to establish the proof of the use of cannabis in the old Near East", notes an article published in the archaeological review of Tel Aviv University by the research team led by professor and specialist Eran Arié, from the Israel Museum, in Jerusalem.
The use "of hallucinogenic substances was known in many other neighboring cultures, but it is the first known evidence of hallucinogenic substance in the kingdom of Judah", emphasize the researchers, who call for further research to better understand this practice and its scope.
"The presence of cannabis in Tel Arad testifies to the use of substances altering the perceptions of the spirit in religious rituals" in this Jewish kingdom established from 931 to 586/587 BC, they explain.
"It seems likely that cannabis was deliberately used at Tel Arad as a psychoactive agent to stimulate ecstasy in religious ceremonies," the researchers say.
Located to the south of the ancient kingdom of Israel, the kingdom of Judah, also called Judea, extended, according to biblical sources, over a territory which today partly overlaps the West Bank, a Palestinian territory including the Hebrew state consider annexing sections. This kingdom had been destroyed during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon.
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