
Opium or Cucumber? Debunking a Myth About Sumerian Drugs - benbreen
https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2018/08/opium-or-cucumber-debunking-myth-about.html
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labarna
I'm working on editing my PhD dissertation into a book right now and I'm
dealing with this exact problem. I work on Babylonian astrology and the text I
studied for my PhD was a complex table of astrological material including
"medical" ingredients. Right now I'm finishing off correcting and translating
all of the medical ingredients in the text.

I've chosen to rather than try to convert the Sumerian/Babylonian names of
ingredients into assumed parallels leave them all in their native language.
Identifying ancient ingredients is really hard (for many of the reasons given
in the blog post). Most all, how can we sure than any of the descriptive
adjectives (especially sensory observations) have modern equivalents that we
can relate to. We know for instance that color words can differ quite a bit
between languages, and that's thanks to living speakers who can show us what
they mean by a certain word. How do we do that for long dead languages? For
instance try explaining the scent of cedar wood without using the word
cedar... and imagine all the culturally specific adjectives you'd have to use
to approximate the smell.

To be sure, it's not a hopeless task. Some ancient names can be identify with
modern parallels, but on the whole it's a very fraught task.

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Radim
That sounds really fascinating. Where could an interested layman read more
about your (and related) work?

I find it very hard to find material in that space, between the pop-culture
"Check out These 10 Things The Ancient Sumerians Did!" (too vacuous) and
expert journal articles (too deep, not enough context). In some areas
Wikipedia rabbit-hole-trips serve well, but not always.

~~~
labarna
Totally agree, there are publications out there that are starting to bridge
the gap. But really now more and more academics are taking to twitter and
sharing their research in a more public way often with much of the field
specific jargon tempered because of the platform.

I just published an article in an open-access book on digital methods in my
field which is available here:
[http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/b97890...](http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/b9789004375086_010)

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ggm
Surely the modern curcurbit is the product of years of breeding to remove
hairs, seeds, gain length and sweetness.

Do we even know what primitive Sumerian cucumber sandwiches looked like?

Poppy heads didn't need breeder changes beyond potency and size! Seeds there
for the grabbing in a handy pocket size container and sap a-plenty.

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joveian
>Thompson himself was aware of the confusion later in his career, but
explained it by saying that the Sumerians used the term UKUS-RIM for both
plants "because of the similarity of the poppy capsule to the small cucumber."

>Honestly, I'm not seeing it.

I hate to see this stuff in a debunking article since it indicates that the
author is not doing a very good job at trying to understand the claims. The
"small cucumber" could easily refer to the cucumber around the time of
polination, when it does look at least vaguely similar even today (and as ggm
mentioned, it might have looked different then). See the second image on this
page (and remember that the flowers will dry at some point):

[http://blog.explosiveblooms.com/2013/07/lemon-cucumbers-
are-...](http://blog.explosiveblooms.com/2013/07/lemon-cucumbers-are-
developing/)

Some of the arguments sound reasonable but I wouldn't put too much trust in
this author.

~~~
benbreen
Author here - fair enough, that sentence was maybe too flippant. I do mention
in the caption that bitter cucumber looks more similar. But if the criterion
for making the assumption is that some types of cucumber are sometimes round
like poppy pods, then I think it's still not at all convincing.

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ryneandal
Thanks for sharing this, I love reading about how different societies interact
with and approach psychoactives. Historical works liek this and
anthropological works like Jeremy Narby's Cosmic Serpent are so intriguing.

