Poppy priestess

A woman buried around 700BC in the grave 15 from Marvinci-Lisičin Dol cemetery near Valandovo, Macedonia, was not an ordinary woman...

This is a beautiful artist depiction of what the woman, believed to have been a priestess, looked like...

She was buried with so-called Paeonian ritual bronzes. She was also wearing a long belt chain, at which end hang a miniature pyxis (jar) shaped like opium poppy bulb, with bird protome (handles). The jar which, based on the organic matter found inside of it, contained raw opium

What is very interesting is that the chain on which the opium jar hang, was attached to two sickle knifes...

Official interpretation of all these sickles is that "These might be sacrificial instruments but also symbolic tools for harvesting, i.e. ultimately symbols of fertility..."

I don't think so...

This amazing looking thing is an old traditional opium poppy bulb scaring sickle knife with a goat horn handle from Central Asia...

This thing is an old traditional opium harvesting sickle knife from Central Asia...

So harvest indeed, but maybe not of wheat. Of poppies...I mean the poppy priests carried a jar with raw opium on her chain which which ended up with these sickles...

Opium harvest, Makedonija, 1950s. 

I wonder what the grandad is smoking in his pipe 🙂

When I was a kid, in 1970s, my grandparents, who lived in a village in South of Serbia, still grew poppies in their garden, "for medicinal tea" 🙂 in case someone needs a pain killer...

In my article about the link between ancient gods and opium poppies, I explained that there is a link between bulls, gods and poppies. 

Because the poppy harvest in most parts of Eurasia starts in Taurus...The time when wild Eurasian cattle, aurochs, start their calving...This is the golden calf...

You know when yesterday I wrote a post about crazy smiling people and bulls on the brooch from Sicily, which dates from around the same time as this burial...Maybe everyone was so happy not because the grain harvest was starting, but because they were all stoned on freshly harvested opium...Harvested in Taurus...

Now to me this is actually the most interesting bit...The priestess was buried around 700 BC wearing massive disc belt

This is traditional female dress from Macedonia, early 20th c AD...With the same massive disc belt...

Sources of info about the burial:

"Connecting Elites and Regions. Perspectives on contacts, relations and differentiation during the Early Iron Age Hallstatt C period in Northwest and Central Europe"

"Sotto la protezione delle Eliadi. La collana della Tomba 660 di Megara Iblea"

"Macedonian Bronzes - 30 Years Later"

"Makedonische Bronzen"