Packaging of ancient tablets

What do we know about ancient medicine? Basically, what is written in the writings of Theofrast (371-286 BC), as well as Pliny of the Senior and Dioscoride, who lived in the 1st century A.D. Ancient drugs come across archaeologists extremely rarely. But recently, luck smiled with an Italian scientist. Parsing the finds raised from the sides of the ship, sank in the 2nd century BC, they found a tin box with five round tablets.

The ship crashed in the Baratti Gulf off the coast of Tuscany was discovered in 1974 at a depth of 18 m, excavations were carried out there for several years, and the finds are still analyzed. Specialists of the Main Directorate for the Archaeological Heritage of Tuscany determined that the shipwreck occurred around the 140-130s BC. The Etruscan city of Potolonia, near which the ship sank, was at that time a large trading port. The vessel, apparently, went to the Potolonia from Greece. It was small: 15-18 m in length and about 3 m in width. On board, glass bowls from Syria Palestinian, still neatly folded, dishes from Pergamon, Rhodes amphoras for transporting wine, an ephez lamp, several tin and bronze products were found: jugs, buckets and even inkwell. And among the finds there was an antique analogue of a medical bag - a wooden casket closing to an iron castle. He completely collapsed, but the contents were preserved: a small stone mortar, an iron probe and a bronze vessel of a peculiar shape, possibly for bloodletting. In addition to these objects in the casket lay 136 beech bottles 5-6 cm high and a diameter of 2 cm and several tin pixids-boxes with tightly closed lids. Apparently, among the passengers of the sunken ship was a doctor who traveled with his instruments.

The fact that one of the pixid is complete, scientists learned after the X -ray examination of the find. Here, chemists from the University of Pisa and biologists from the University of Florence joined the Tuscan archaeologists, and with common efforts they examined the contents of the box. Inside lay five round gray tablets with a diameter of about 4 and 1 cm thick. The press was clearly used in their manufacture, and scientists believe that the tablets were stamped in some kind of workshop.

Among the inorganic components of the tablet, zinc (75%) predominated in the composition of minerals of hydrocyc like and humility (hydroxicarbonate and zinc carbonate). Scientists also discovered silicon and hematite (oxide of trivalent iron).

Of the organic components there are traces of wheat flour and a large amount of starch grains, also, apparently, wheat. Flour and starch at one time boiled, and then dried. The composition of the tablets also included plant and animal lipids, bee wax, pine resin and a little vegetable coal, as well as linen fibers and pollen. The vast majority of pollen grains belongs to the oil ( olea europaea ), there are also pollen of oats and wheat, plants from the families of haze and crucifixes, black cornflowers ( centaurea nigra ), hemorrhages ( sanguisorba minor ), dioecious nett Black (Alnus Glutinosa )

Many of these plants are mentioned in ancient medical treatises, but researchers believe that pollen in tablets is unlikely to add specifically. Most likely, she got there with bee wax or olive oil. In the past, for the manufacture of cosmetics and drugs, oil was compressed from unripe olives, the surface of which could be sprinkled with pollen. Coal, perhaps, also fell into the medicine by accident, and the pine resin performed several functions: the burning of fat slowed down due to its antioxidant properties and prevented microbial growth. Flax fibers are present only on the surface of the tablets, they are not inside. They could fasten the tablet, not allowing it to crumble.

Thanks to this find, we learned a lot about the composition and technology of manufacturing ancient drugs; It remains only to find out why they were used. The main inorganic components of pills-hydrocyc like and Smithsonitis. Although the active substance does not necessarily prevail in the drug, zinc compounds could well be used for medical purposes. In ancient medicine, special attention was paid to zinc oxide, which was received as a by -product in the process of copper casting from minerals that also contain zinc ore. Pliny Senior in “Natural History” and dioscoride in his essay “On Medicinal Substances” described various qualities of substance called Cadmia , which was collected from the walls of the furnaces for smelting copper. They noted that this product is used in the manufacture of medicines for the eyes and for the skin. According to Italian researchers, in this case, zinc compounds should be understood by CADMIA .

Scientists believe that an unknown doctor was taking a box with eye lotions among other instruments, and not only the composition of the pills leads them to this thought. The Latin word "collyrium" (eye lotion) came from the Greek "κoλλυ´ρα" - small round bread. Well, these are really bread, there is flour there, and the size for the eye lotion is suitable.

G. Giachia et al., “Ingredients of a 2.000-y -ld medicine reled by Chemical, Mineralogical, and Botanical Investigations, Pnas (2013), Vol. 110, no. 4, 1193–1196.