French scientists examining the stomach of the Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II found fragments of tobacco leaves. Further analysis of the 3,200-year-old mummy indicated the presence of nicotine in the body. Conventional wisdom has it that tobacco was unknown in the Old World until the Spanish brought it back from the Americas in the Sixteenth Century.
(Anonymous; "Tobacco in Egypt," Anthropological Journal of Canada, 16:10, 1978.)
From Science Frontiers #7, June 1979. © 1979-2000 William R. Corliss
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