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July 14, 2006
Friday Opium Pot Blogging
Pictured below is a small juglet called a bilbil.
This particular bilbil is from somewhere in Palestine and I think it is likely from the Late Bronze age. It's hard to be more specific. It is about 11 cm tall. Its rim, handle and based were repaired in modern times, but not in a particularly skillfully way. Bilbil's show influence of pottery forms from Cyprus. In fact, many of them are from Cyprus while many others are from Anatolia. However, I believe this one is of local (Palestinian) manufacture. This example is rather small. Some bilbils can be rather large. On the same plate that Ruth Amiran, 177, pl. 54, illustrates a bilbil that is very simular to this one, she has a drawing of one that is about 30 cm tall and I have seen bilbils in museums that were even taller.
Now take a look at this.
On the right is a picture of the pod of an opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. On the left is the same bilbil pictured upside-down. See any morphological resemblance? Well some think that the bilbil has its very recognizable shape because it resembles an opium poppy pod. After all, bibils were often used to ship and store opium in antiquity.
References:
Simon, J.E., A.F. Chadwick and L.E. Craker. Herbs: An Indexed Bibliography. 1971-1980. The Scientific Literature on Selected Herbs, and Aromatic and Medicinal Plants of the Temperate Zone, Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1984 (picture of opium poppy pod)
Posted by DuaneSmith at July 14, 2006 07:33 PM | Read more on Archaeology |
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