Prehistoric Pharmacy
Therapy with saffron and the goddess at Thera.  Ferrence SC, Bendersky G. Department of Art History, Temple University,  Philadelphia, USA.  sferrenc@temple.edu This paper presents a new interpretation of a unique  Bronze Age (c. 3000-1100 BCE) Aegean wall painting  in the building of Xeste 3 at Akrotiri,Thera.  Crocus carturightianus and its active principle,  saffron,are the primary subjects at Xeste 3.  Several lines of evidence suggest that the meaning  of these frescoes concerns saffron and healing:  (1) the unusual degree of visual attention given  to the crocus, including the variety of methods for display  of the stigmas;  (2) the painted depiction of the line of saffron production  from plucking blooms to the collection of stigmas;  and (3) the sheer number (ninety) of medical indications   for which saffron has been used from the Bronze Age  to the present. The Xeste 3 frescoes appear to portray  a divinity of healing associated with her phytotherapy,  saffron. Cultural and commercial interconnections  between the Therans, the Aegean world, and their  neighboring civilizations in the early 2nd millennium BCE  indicate a close network of thematic exchange,   but there is no evidence that Akrotiri borrowed  any of these medicinal (or iconographic) representations.   The complex production line, the monumental illustration  of a goddess of medicine with her saffron attribute,   and this earliest botanically accurate image of an herbal  medication are all Theran innovations.Publication Types:         PMID: 15259204 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] After systematic observation, is more than obvious that the Priestly society of Prehistoric Thera, is using the walls to register the most unique and important information, regarding the use of numerous medicinal plants, that as we’ll see in this article, are tasted in experimental medicine,  for healing, the most aggressive forms of cancer like leukemia,  as well as others serious diseases … The healing power of all this plants, as clearly is shown in xeste 3,  is related with the goddess, the Mistress of the Animals being painted  with the snake in her head, and is to declare her function of mostly life preservation goddess… It is important to notice the priestess image in west house,  painted also with a snake in her head… The main difference between Hippocratic medicine and Shamanism  is the role of the doctor regarding the patient … The shamanist priestess as later on the priest is using the plants to heal  the physical but also the spiritual dimension of the illness …    To heal not only the patient, but the whole community… What makes the wall paintings, the most important testimony  of prehistoric medicine, is that the healing plants of both concepts  of medicine are the same…  Only the reason of healing ability seems to be explained differently… Pancratium Maritimum, myrtle and saffron, not only continue to serve medicine today, but for each of those plants we can find a lot of experimental uses all around the planet, from hundreds of universities,  to heal leukemia and other types of cancer, but there is not even one  of those examining the combine uses we have pictures  from the wall paintings… Before the rational medicine of Hippocrates, the shamanistic experience  is rejected from the scientifically practice exactly as any source of events before the Homeric poetry is consider  as mythology because they were never written to be evaluated as facts… You’ll be able to realize that after  the wall paintings of Thera, this mistaken consideration, is responsible for a 37 years delay in experimental medicine,  since the frescoes medicinal information is obvious but unknown,  not of the healing abilities of the plants but mostly the logic  of combine use to achieve a result, that obviously works,  becausethe priestly society was depending from its success… Priests or doctors are “determinate” to achieve their goals,  so to preserve their privileges, since their acceptance is always depending and controlled by the society… Before we start to explore the 6 plants that we have chosen to show  the main purpose of the wall paintings of Thera, is necessary to explain the presence of numerous narcotics,  by the phrase of Carl Marx, that religion is the opium of people… Indeed, the primary motive of any human creature, is to seek  and to preserve the well being and happiness, so the first reason of any medicinal plant, is to relieve pain, before anything else… Addiction as a natural reaction to preserve the well being,  must be the key to explain how prehistoric people discover all those hypnotic plants, since the frescoes clearly show the relation  with the animals even before the humans… The persistence of the monkeys to discover saffron is rewarded  by the priestly society, since the monkey offer saffron to the mistress  of the animals, to give as a good reason to call the monkey the first pharmacist in medical history … Every house iconography is related with different medicinal plants  that maybe we’ll never be able to know exactly their use in details, but the picture is giving us the relation with medical  practices we can understand, and in certain cases,  we still have a lot to learn from, if we examine them the way the frescoes  are showing… The treatments, or the parts of the plants to be used, rest unknown,  so this unique evidence could be useful to all those who study each one of the following plants…
1] PANCRATIUM MARITIMUM  or    Sea Daffodil.
[House of the ladies] PREHISTORIC MUSEUM OF THERA
As an alkaloid painted in the house where the priestesses were  getting prepared for the rituals, it can explain the razed heads of the frescoes,  since today in Botswana  the Busmen raze their heads, to cover the skin with the bubble  of the plant. If we notice that almost all young population is painted with raised  heads in the frescoes, it would be logical to assume that the cardio  tonic effects of the plant as well as the hallucinogenic ones,  were of a high estimation in the prehistoric societies but also  in ancient Greece, since pancration was an Olympic game  and as a form of wrestle, appears to be evolution of the kick-boxing, style of fight, we have as impression, from the boxing children fresco .         As we noticed already in the proper house iconography,  kwasi [local name in Botswana] could explain  the presence of the African fresco fragment in sector A, with sacral horns fragments to symbolize that African shamanism,  was present in prehistoric European pharmacopeias, and the role  of the maritime Minoan or Theran society, was to transfer all those  plants from the African continent, as well as the techniques of uses,  to perform the divine results…
2] LILY                       NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ATHENS
Analysis of the ritual and sacred iconography of dynastic Egypt,  as seen on stelae, in magical papyri, and on vessels, indicates  that these people possessed a profound knowledge of plant lore  and altered states of consciousness … The loving full aspect of this fresco, beyond its interpretation  to celebrate the renewal of nature, as main function of the goddess, presents a good example  of the connection between swallows & lilies, which should be observed and it could signalise how the shamanist  and priestly society, discover the relation between the bird  and the plant.     Even that there is no evidence of use of lilies for healing purposes  from the frescoes, we have to assume that certainly the plant  should be tasted….
3] IVY        sector B Frieze of boxing children & antelopes frescoes…
Poison Ivy, is one more example of shamanism that for thousands  of years, was considered as a personification of the fertility goddess,  as we have seen in sector B chapter, where at 700 bC  the heart shape of the leaf, was painted instead of the goddess  head, in the Boetian Amphora…
Symbol of Dionysus and Vachuous,  at the Greek and Roman Antiquity, where the priests  used to decorate the bed of just married couples,  to insure the spirit of fidelity and fertility…  It is more than obvious that the goddess became god,  the priestess became priest, but the symbol remains,  even if the new worshipers of Dionysus instead of ivy, venerated grapevine, only because  the hard shape leaves confused them,  so the prehistoric shamanistic concept of ivy, appears to be replaced with the grapevine and the historical use  to bless the bed of just married couples is stopped in Christian era,  even that Christ in his last dinner, is referring to wine symbolically,  as its own blood and in Orthodox religion is a basically communion substance… Today we found it being used for ant inflammatory and ant allergic treatments… The three last medicinal plants we will present you are the mostly  important ones, since all of them were painted in the wounded girl’s  image in xeste 3 in such a way, that we recognise a rational medical action, so unique and so important, that is necessary to describe more detailed,  so we can understand a medical practise of combine treatment,  that we definitely can recognise as a pure medical act,  but also, one possible explanation of a matriarch cal initiation ,  that explains how people consider conception,  in relation with saffron and virginity…
In the image of the initiated girl as the archaeologist use to call,  we have three medicinal plants: 4] PINE: Lystral basin Xeste 3 “the Initiated woman in the centre  that is holding her head”… As a powerful antiseptic against wounds, leave little doubt for the reason  of its presence in the suffering girl image… Painted behind her head, is declaring the necessity of antisepsis because  of the wound, witch we assume, as the girl is bleeding…  The reason of bleeding is the key of the whole image,  since the wound from something she stepped on, as theory, is not fitting the totality of the building iconography,  which is related with the offering of saffron, to the fertility goddess… 5] MYRTLE: In front of her head we have a myrtle branch … Since the girl is holding the head with her hands, is more than obvious  that she suffer from headache…  [Aspirin throughout the ages: a historical review]   Levesque H,  Lafont O. Département de médecine interne, centre hospitalier universitaire Rouen-Boisguillaume, France. Even at the beginning of the next millennium, aspirin  will still offer surprises. Its relatively young pharmacological history compares with the early use  of salicylate-containing plants since antiquity.      The Assyrians and the Egyptians were aware  of the analgesic effects of a decoction of myrtle  or willow leaves for joint pains.  Hippocrates recommended chewing willow leaves for analgesia in childbirth and the Reverend Edward Stones  is acknowledged as the first person to scientifically define  the beneficial antipyretic effects of willow bark.  At the beginning of the 19th century salicin was extracted from willow bark and purified. Although a French chemist,  Charles Gerhardt, was the first to synthesize aspirin  in a crude form, the compound was ignored, and later studied by Felix Hoffmann. He reportedly tested  the rediscovered agent  on himself and on his father, who suffered  from chronic arthritis--a legend was born and Bayer  Laboratories rose to the heights of the pharmacological world. First used for its potent analgesic, antipyretic  and anti-inflammatory properties, aspirin were successfully  used as an antithrombotic agent. Sir John Vane elucidated aspirin's active mechanism as an inhibitor of prostaglandin synthetase and received  the Nobel Price in Medicine for this work in 1982.  Two isoform of cyclooxygenase (COX-1 and COX-2) have now been identified, each possessing similar activities,  but differing  in characteristic tissue expression.  The cox enzyme is now a target of drug interventions  against the inflammatory process.  After two centuries of evaluation, aspirin remains topical,  and new therapeutic indications are increasingly being studied. PMID: 10763200 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] The prehistoric “ASPIRIN”, will release the headache, treat the fiver and pain, but also helps to conceive,  as a powerful antiseptic … This is exactly the most important function ,since it is related  to the total impression of the building frescoes, as to transform  a girl to a woman so to conceive… 6] SAFFRON: As the main subject of this house frescoes,  painted in front of the bleeding foot, does not necessarily means  that she was wounded as she was collecting it,  but that she was wounded  as she was initiated in using it…  There is a relation between the monkey and saffron, witch Proff N Platon call the crocus- gathering monkey… The Goddess gift is a powerful emenagoge, to regulate the menstrual circle and result life through fertility… Any form of initiation is related with what is offered to the goddess:  the use of saffron, to achieve fertility and to be relized from pain… The day of saffron’s harvest, young girls participate to it,  guided by the older ones that teach them how to pick the right plant, to separate the pistils from the flowers,  and to offer them to the goddess to be blessed … The initiation suppose to be related to the harvest, since it is painted  in the same building, but also to the main function of the goddess who’s responsible for its effects of bleeding, that suppose  to be a sign of life, if we notice that the animals reproduction  is stimulated by the menstrual bleeding …         This paradox of nature must be the reason  of this prehistoric initiation, to realize from pain being related            with  bleeding so to achieve pregnancy… Using edged instruments, they should deposit the saffron quantities,  inside the girls’ womb, to achieve the first bleeding…  To avoid inflammation, fiver, pain and even death,  they should use pin but also myrtle that not only relieved  from fiver and pain, but also , allowed saffron to stimulate  the menstrual circle… This hypothetical operation, based in the plants medical properties,  could give us evidence of rational medical concept of a pregnancy process,  if we accept that the initiated woman  will be ready for conception after the initiation, since the regulation  of her menstrual circle with saffron, will allowed her motherhood… The three women image in xeste 3, is giving us the impression  of an organised society that consider initiation as a religious  and social step in women life, between virginity and motherhood… Childhood and virginity for the youngest, initiation  for the middle one, and maternity for the last one, if we accept that the crystal necklace of the picture is a gift  to the goddess because of her blesses and the naked breast  a sign of pregnancy… The fact that circumcision it has similarities to this prehistoric initiation,  is very important to realise the differences between  a Matriarch cal initiation process and a family structure one ,  since both suppose to insure fertility as a social duty of all community members  regarding the main purpose of any religion being to extent life through fertility…        Is there any connection between the initiation of xeste 3  and circumcision of the Monotheistic Religions after history  and the Bible? I believe the only answer is, yes, it has to be some… As in the male or female initiation process , all members of those societies, symbolically sacrifice their youth and virginity  as a price to pay for membership, also in this prehistoric community, initiation means sacrifice to the common task to extent life through fertility… All those who need to examine closer the medicinal plants  of the frescoes, specially the researches for the future uses, can visit Pub Med the electronic library of USA health system,  or botanical.com for all plants from the frescoes… Today after thousands of year’s male or female initiation rituals,  without medical care , should be forbidden and with medical care should be questioned … Santorini ancient Greece  analysis, can help to this important task...