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Tobacco in Ancient Egypt
In 1976, the mummified remains of Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II was shipped
to Paris for tests on an area of deteriorating skin (found to be bettle
invasion). One of the 20 French scientists involved was Dr. Michelle Lescot
of the National History Museum in Paris.
Examining the wrappings for bacteria, she was stunned to find samples
of the tobacco plant. Naturally, she was immediately ridiculed by her
fellow academics who suggested that the mummy was contaminated in 1881
when the tomb was first discovered. 
To defend her findings, Dr. Lescot was allowed to perform further tests
from deep within the body. These examinations reproduced the initial findings
and dispelled the possibility of simple contamination. It also revealed
that the plant was introduced during funerary procedures.
Further tests showed that where the internal organs were removed for
placement in canopic jars, a stuffing was used which included plantain,
flax, black pepper seeds, camomile and chopped tobacco leaves. It seems
the tobacco was used as an insecticide and preservative.
The presence of tobacco in an Egyptian mummy cannot be explained as according
to orthodox academia, the plant was unknown in the ancient world. That
it is considered indigenous to the Americas is however a misnomer as there
is a form of wild tobacco found in Africa called Nicotiana rustica as
opposed to the Nicotiana tabacum of the Americas.
It was used by African cultures and as an Arabic smoke medicine in Sudan
long before Columbus. It was known in a number of dialects as taba, tawa,
tabgha and tama. That these terms are so similar to the pre-columbian
'tobacco' used by the indigenous Carribean peoples for the act of smoking,
strongly suggests that the plant crossed the Atlantic either moving eastwards
or westwards from Africa many centuries before Columbus.
This African variant of the plant might tempt us to explain Ramses'
tobacco as being introduced to Egypt from the south, but this solution
is complicated by the presence of Cocaine in other Egyptian mummies -
the coca plant is certainly native only to South America.
Cocaine in Ancient Egypt
In 1992 , German toxicologist Svetlana Balabanova was testing the Egyptian
mummified remains of nine individuals from the Munich Museum among them
the complete body of Henuttawy, a priestess of the temple of Amun at Theses
c. 1000 BC.
The results were so extraordinary that she sent samples to three other
labs who confirmed her findings - that the remains contained large quantities
of drugs. These included hashish (accepted as present in ancient Egypt),
nicotine (from tobacco), and in every single individual - cocaine! This
psychoactive alkaloid comes from the leaves of the coca plant and was
officially produced for the first time in 1859.
The implications of these tests were profound and predicatably, accusations
of incompetence and fake mummies were levelled at Dr. Balabanova (a respected
forensics expert often working with the police). In response she, with
colleagues ran a further 3,000 tests on a variety of preserved remains
from a number of countries such as China, Germany, Sudan as well as Egypt.
A high level of these specimens showed the presence of nicotine and /or
cocaine.
Some of these apecimens went back 7,000 years, making them older than
the Munich mummies. An investigation on the authenticity of the mummies
was also conducted by Egyptologist Rosalie David of Manchester museum,
who concluded that they were not likely to be fakes.
Mainstream Egyptology has been unwilling to accpet these discoveries
and yet is unable to offer an explanation. The only possible answer is
that there was trading contact between the two continents. That nicotine
and cocaine has been found in the same Egyptian individuals as well as
the similarity in the root name for tobacco on both continents implies
pre-columbian contact.
So is there any more evidence of ancient transatlantic trading and who
might have been responsible for these shipments? Was it a seafaring culture
of American origin, or one from the Ancient world?
Voyagers
In 1976, Jose Robert Teixeira was spear-fishing in the Bay of Guanabara
about 24 kilometres outside the port of Rio de Janeiro, when he spotted
something unfamiliar on the seabed. Closer examination revealed 3 huge
jars covered in crustaceans.
They were bought off him by an antiques dealer who took them to the Brazilian
Institute of Archaeology where scientists reluctantly admitted that they
were ancient 'Greek' amphorae, used to transport commodities between ports
in the ancient world.
Explained away by Brazilian scholars as disgorged cargo from colonial
times, it was another 5 years before the director of Rio de Janeiro's
Maritime Museum hired world-renowned underwater archaeologist Robert F.
Marx to find the wreck. By this stage, many local divers had retrieved
many jars from the area.
Examining these, Marx determined that they were not Greek but infact Moroccan
- manufactured about 2,000 years ago. Showing the jars to oceanographers,
he was told that the encrustation on the surface was of a type unique
to the Bay of Guanabara - meaning they had been in situ for thousands
of years. The implications were so huge that Marx sent samples of the
encrustation to Harvard's Museum of comparative Zoology and the University
of Miami's Marine Lab.
Both were not only able to confirm the initial findings but also dated
the samples through carbon-14 dating to about 1,500 years old. Using sonar
surveys, two sunken targets were located on underwater reefs and thought
to be certainly one if not two wrecks.
On Marx's request for permission to investigate further, the Spanish
and Portuguese governments intervened, persuading the Brazilian authorities
to stop the whole project. they considered that confirmation of a roman
wreck in Brazilian waters would invalidate not just Pedro Alvarez Cabal's
claim to have discovered
Brazil, but also Spain's claim to have discovered the New World in 1492.
Brazilians were also outraged by what they saw as Marx's wish to rob them
of their heritage! There were protest marches and when Marx asked a Brazilian
archaeologist to examine what looked like Phoenician jewellery discovered
in Brazil, he seized the goods and said "Cabal discovered Brazil, and
let's leave it like that".
Even the then Brazilian Minister if Education is reported to have told
Marx, "Every plaza in Brazil has a statue of Cabal, the real discoverer
of Brazil, and we are not going to replace these with monuments to some
annonymous Italian pizza vendor just because you've invented a roman shipwreck
where none exists".
This fiasco raises the question of how many times national politics have
stood in the way of truth. Though they can't dispute the evidence, scholars
explain away ancient artefacts in American waters by stating that ancient
vessels may have accidentally reached the western Atlantic seaboard by
being blown off course by storms or bad navigation, there floundering
or being abandoned by their crews.
In the last 100 years, no less than 600 African vessels have been cast
onto the South American coast. Even Cabal himself was inadvertently carried
across the ocean after rounding the cape of Africa. This begs the question
- how many of these vessels made it back carrying tales of an 'opposite
continent'? Could these stories have prompted voyages by renowned sailors
of the ancient worls such as the Carthaginians and Phoenicians?
The Visitors
The land of Phoenicia was located on the Mediterranean coast of modern
Syria & Lebanon. In the old testament, it was known as Canaan, 'the land
of purple' which translates into Greek as Phoenicia, derived from the
purple dye used on very expensive textiles (hence the link between purple
and royalty).
The nation evolved from a mixture of races in the Middle East in the
second millenium BC. One of these was already trading with Egypt and Crete
from Byblos (Lebanese coast) as early as 3000 BC. Their only interest
was in trade.
In the first millenium BC they established city-ports throughout the
Meditarranean as far west as Iberia (Spain) and founded the port of Carthage
on the coast of Libya (modern Tunisia) c. 814 BC. From here both the Iberic
Phoenicians and Carthaginians explored the outer ocean, establishing trading
settlements as far south as Senegal and Guinea on the west African coast
and reaching the British Isles in the north. They were master sailors,
the only people in a position to trade with the Americas.
Greek historian Herodotus tells us that the Pharaoh Netho II (c. 610-595
BC), wanting to find a way to tranfer ships between the Red Sea and Egypt's
Mediterranean ports, commissioned 'Phoenician men' to circumnavigate the
African continent. This they accomplished in a 3 year voyage, setting
up temporary settlements on the way.
The convincing fact in the story is that Hrodotus adds a footnote which
reports that the Phoenician sailors claimed that, "....in sailing round
Libya (Africa), they had the sun upon their right hand". In theory, the
people of the ancient world would not have known that the sun is visible
in the northern sky when viewed from below the Tropic of Capricorn.
If they could achieve such feats 2,100 years before the Portuguese did
it, how far could they go? This account came to us from Herodotus via
the Egyptians and was not necessarily the first time such vast journeys
had been undertaken. Though Greek writers such as Diodorus Siculus tell
us of the Carthaginians settling on Atlantic islands with mild climates
and navigable rivers (found only on Cuba or Hispaniola), there is no information
on trading routes or destinations from Phoenician sources.
This is because they wanted to keep the trade from their Roman rivals.
Greek geographer Strabo tells us how a Phoenician captain, on realising
his ship was being tailed by a Roman vessel, led both ships onto shoals
where they were both destroyed. Surviving the sinking, the captain was
generously rewarded for his loss by the state. We have to look elsewhere
to find evidence of their efforts.
Looking to the Americas, we are not disappointed. In 1787, a haul of
Carthaginian coins was found by road builders in Massachusetts. Unidentified
by the workers, they were handed out to passers by, one of whom was the
Revrend Thaddeus Mason Harris, who luckily brought them to the attention
of the then president John Quincy Adams. Surviving pieces were identified
as coins minted in the third century BC and bore Kufic inscriptions used
by the Carthaginians.
More recently, early issue Carthaginian coins were found in Conneticut
and their Punic inscriptions read 'in camp' signifying their military
usage. They also bore the image of a horses' head - the motif of Carthage.
Though historians acknowledge the authenticity of the coins, they do not
accept that they could have reached the Americas before colonial times.
Yet Carthaginian coins found in the Azores have been accepted as solid
evidence of contact with this nation, despite the complete lack of any
other supporting evidence.
There is however, an abundance of out-of-place artefacts in the Americas.
Aside from coins, there is a lamp, sword and many inscribed stones, some
of which are incontestable and imply that foreign visitors from different
cultures left their mark after reaching the Americas.
 Some
of the most astounding evidence is found in South America. The Olmec culture
thrived in Mexico between c. 1200 - 400 BC. They produced colossal stone
carvings that weigh up to 20 tonnes each. On discovery, these gigantic
heads were facing eastwards and their broad faces, wide cheeks, full lips
and flattened noses clearly represent black Africans. Other smaller stautes
of similar design have been found in Olmec and other earlier sites, some
of these also have tight curls and tribal scars.
Other figures discovered at Olmec sites bear distinctive oriental features
and Betty J. Meggers of the Smithsonian proposes that there is a good
case to be argued for contact between the Olmec and China's Shang dynasty,
sighting similarities in writing, jade carvings and architecture. Her
theories were supported by Chinese Shang dynasty specialists who found
they could read stone celts unearthed at Olmec sites.
Then there is the eclipse calendar of the Maya which not just mirrors
the one used by the Han dynasty in China (c. 282 BC - AD 220), but incorporates
exactly the same mistakes!
Recent testing of white blood cell protiens (HLAs) directly links certain
South Asian peoples, as well as certain Afro-Arabian tribes, with native
americans. A genetic link that could only have come from cross-fertilisation.
So what about he Phoenicians?
At the cult centre of La Venta, stone reliefs show figures with pronounced
Semitic features, bushy and pointed beards & moustaches as well as Mediterranean
clothing. This is more astonishing when you know that the peoples of Central
America are unable to grow substantial facial hair.
Constance Irwin's book 'Fair gods and Stone Faces' (1963) also points
out that these individuals are wearing shoes that have pointed upturned
toes. Only 3 Meditarranean peoples wore these: the Etruscans (unlikely
to have reached the Americas), the Hittites (land-bound), and the Phoenicians
who as we have seen were master sailors with West African settlements,
and could have introduced black African to Mexico.
Did the Phoenicians trade with the Olmecs and sell their wares on to
the Egyptians?
Source: Gateway to Atlantis by Andrew Collins
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