Sticky residue inside bronze vessels found in an underground shrine in Paestum, southern Italy, has been identified as honey. A new method of analysis identified the substance 70 years after it was discovered, contradicting previous analyses and confirming the hypothesis of the archaeologists who first excavated the shrine.
Paestum was an important Greek colony founded in 600 B.C. on the Tyrrhenian Sea coast near what is now Salerno. It is famed for its three great Doric temples (dedicated to Hera, Athena and Neptune) dating to between 550 and 450 B.C. and in better condition than many of its brethren on the Greek mainland.
The vessel was discovered in 1954 in a heroön near the Temple of Athena. , Dating to around 520 B.C., the shrine consisted of a tumulus within a rectangular enclosure faced by large stones. The excavation of the tumulus uncovered a pitched limestone roof over an underground chamber. The chamber contained eight bronze vessels — six hydrae (water jars) and two amphorae — with spectacularly decorated handles and one black figure amphora made in Athens. The pots were arranged around an empty iron bed, representing the presence of a deity, or more likely, the founder of the city who had died a century before the shrine was built.
Residue of a thick, paste-like substance were found inside the vessels with traces of it on the exterior indicating it had originally been a liquid. The substance had a waxy smell and archaeologists at the time thought it was an offering of a honeycomb, a symbol of immortality in Greek mythology, of which only the beeswax had survived. This was contradicted by scientific testing, however. Three different laboratory analyses on different samples of the substance — the first test a few years after excavation, the second in 1970, the third in 1983 — excluded honey. No sugar was ever found; the residue did not dissolve and water and its fatty acids suggested it had contained animal and/or vegetable fats.
One of the bronze hydrae and a large chunk of residue were loaned to Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum in 2019. The museum was able to perform a new investigation of the residue’s composition using a combination of spectroscopy, high resolution chromatography and mass spectrometry analyses.
They found that:
- The ancient residue had a chemical fingerprint nearly identical to that of modern beeswax and modern honey, with a higher acidity level that was consistent with changes after long-term storage.
- The residue’s chemical composition was more complex than that of the heat-degraded beeswax, suggesting the presence of honey or other substances.
- Where the residue had touched the bronze jar, degraded sugar mixed with copper was found.
- Hexose sugars, a common group of sugars found in honey, were detected in higher concentrations in the ancient residue than in modern beeswax.
- Royal jelly proteins (known to be secreted by the western honeybee) were also identified in the residue.
These results suggest that the ancient substance is what is left of ancient honey. However, the researchers can’t exclude the possibility that other bee products may also be present.
“Ancient residues aren’t just traces of what people ate or offered to the gods — they are complex chemical ecosystems,” explains [research team leader Luciana] da Costa Carvalho. “Studying them reveals how those substances changed over time, opening the door to future work on ancient microbial activity and its possible applications.”
The results of the scientific analyses have been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and can be read here.
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