The Ebers Papyrus (ca. 1,550 B.C.) from Ancient Egypt describes medical marijuana. Other ancient Egyptian papyri that mention medical marijuana are the Ramesseum III Papyrus (1700 BC), the Berlin Papyrus (1300 BC) and the Chester Beatty Medical Papyrus VI (1300 BC). The ancient Egyptians even used hemp (cannabis) in suppositories for relieving the pain of hemorrhoids. The egyptologist Lise Manniche notes the reference to “plant medical marijuana” in several Egyptian texts, one of which dates back to the eighteenth century B.C.

Give me truth.

It’s very cool to discover just how advanced some ancient civilizations were. Knowing whether or not these concoctions actually had beneficial effects is important because it tells us something about how they gathered knowledge and how effective they were at evaluating it — not because it’s going to rediscover some ancient miracle cure.

Of course, the knowledge we have lost from them is as incalculable as the way they built those pyramids (hint: wasn’t aliens). Egyptians kept their writings on papyrus. The tombs and everything covered in hieroglyphs is the ancient world’s version of a billboard. Could you imagine what you would think of our society if all you knew of them was the buildings and signs we put on them?

I mean, one man created a way to move sarsen-type stones BY HIMSELF. It was laborious, but do-able, and the way he did it wouldn’t leave a trace behind. And for those of you who don’t know me and are rolling your eyes at me, here’s the youtube video of the man doing it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRRDzFROMx0 Gravity is the enemy AND the friend. (this guy even moved a whole barn for fun at one point)

Again, the amount of knowledge we have lost from the ancients is incalculable. Check the Kerkythea mechanism and others. Knowledge was jealously guarded, so they wouldn’t have written it down. Even today, you have to pay hundreds or hundreds of thousands of dollars to be admitted to the educated cognoscenti ($300k to be a MD at some places) and attain all the knowledge. We write the knowledge down now, but don’t widely distribute it. It too could be lost (thermonuclear war) and if any man survives, their society will look back upon ours and wonder at the lost technologies we employed. Stuff like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX6clRC21vo&NR=1 may not make it, so they’ll never know, but there would be some ruined cities full of skyscraping architecture and billboards and what-not that they’d piece together some of the knowledge we had. Maybe if someone wrote about liquid metal they’d attribute it to alchemy or religion or science fiction.

So who’s to know what’s been lost?