If ZZ Top have a favorite ancient Egypt­ian deity, that deity is sure­ly Bes, whom the New York Times’ Alexan­der Nazaryan quotes cura­tor and schol­ar Branko van Oppen de Ruiter as call­ing “a beer drinker and a hell-rais­er.” In a paper pub­lished last month in Sci­en­tif­ic Reports, Van Oppen and fif­teen col­lab­o­ra­tors call the row­dy but appar­ent­ly benev­o­lent Bes “one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing and wild­ly pop­u­lar fig­ures of ancient Egypt­ian reli­gion,” and he’s come to mod­ern pub­lic atten­tion thanks to the sub­ject of that paper: a 2,000-year-old cup mold­ed in the shape of his head that has test­ed pos­i­tive for traces of psy­che­del­ic sub­stances — as well as alco­hol and bod­i­ly flu­ids.

Their analy­sis of the mug, a 3D mod­el of which you can exam­ine above, “yield­ed evi­dence of two plants known to have hal­lu­cino­genic prop­er­ties: Syr­i­an rue and the blue water lily,” writes Nazaryan, and it also bore traces of “a fer­ment­ed alco­holic liq­uid derived from fruit,” then sweet­ened with pine nuts, hon­ey, and licorice.

Those were the sorts of ingre­di­ents ancient Egyp­tians had at hand to make the med­i­cine go down — if med­i­cine it was. Nazaryan quotes dig­i­tal archae­ol­o­gist Davide Tanasi, whose lab per­formed the research, cit­ing the traces of sub­stances like blood and breast milk as under­scor­ing that “this is a mag­i­cal potion,” rather than one intend­ed as pure­ly cura­tive.

Bes, as Van Oppen and his col­lab­o­ra­tors write, “emerged from the mag­i­cal realm of the world of demons as a guardian fig­ure,” and by the Roman Impe­r­i­al age “spo­rad­i­cal­ly acquired divine wor­ship.” He “pro­vid­ed pro­tec­tion from dan­ger, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly avert­ing harm” — and also “had a cer­tain regen­er­a­tive impor­tance con­tribut­ing to the ful­fill­ment and hap­pi­ness of fam­i­ly life in all facets of repro­duc­tion, from viril­i­ty and sex­u­al­i­ty, via fer­til­i­ty and fecun­di­ty, to child­birth and growth.” Hence the spec­u­la­tion that women hop­ing to become preg­nant would drink the potion from his head in order to take a psy­che­del­ic jour­ney that would set them on the path to moth­er­hood. That’s hard­ly the most effi­cient means to the end, as we’d see it today, but giv­en the birthrates of increas­ing­ly many soci­eties across the world, we mod­erns may find our­selves in need of Bes’ assis­tance yet.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Gold­en Guide to Hal­lu­cino­genic Plants: Explore the 1977 Illus­trat­ed Guide Cre­at­ed by Harvard’s Ground­break­ing Eth­nob­otanist Richard Evan Schultes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Go to Japan today, and the coun­try will present you with plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to buy pan, tabako, and tem­pu­ra. These prod­ucts them­selves — bread, cig­a­rettes, and deep-fried seafood or veg­eta­bles — will be famil­iar enough. Even the words that refer to them may have a rec­og­niz­able ring, espe­cial­ly if you hap­pen to be a Por­tuguese-speak­er. Japan­ese has more than its fair share of nat­u­ral­ized terms, used to refer to every­thing from the kon­bi­ni on the cor­ner to the riizanabu­ru prices found there­in, but none of them are as deeply root­ed as its terms import­ed from Por­tu­gal.

Rela­tions between Japan and Por­tu­gal go back to 1543, when the first Por­tuguese sailors arrived in the south­ern Japan­ese arch­i­pel­ago. Impres­sions of this encounter are includ­ed in the video above, a Voic­es of the Past com­pi­la­tion of how actu­al six­teenth-cen­tu­ry Japan­ese his­to­ri­ans described their unex­pect­ed vis­i­tors. “A south­ern bar­bar­ian ves­sel came to our shores,” writes one of them, anony­mous­ly. From it “emerged an unname­able crea­ture, some­what sim­i­lar in shape to a human being, but look­ing rather more like a long-nosed gob­lin, or the giant demon mikoshi-nyūdō.”

This grotesque, unin­tel­li­gi­ble crea­ture turned to be a bateren; that is, a padre, a mis­sion­ary priest come to spread the kirishi­tan reli­gion in this dis­tant land. In this pri­ma­ry task they faced severe, ulti­mate­ly insur­mount­able chal­lenges, but as the first Euro­peans to make con­tact with Japan, they also hap­pened much more suc­cess­ful­ly to dis­sem­i­nate West­ern con­cepts and tech­niques in agri­cul­ture, sci­ence, and art (not to men­tion dessert cul­ture). Their intro­duc­tion of the gun, described in detail by anoth­er con­tem­po­rary his­to­ri­an, also changed the course of Japan­ese his­to­ry, doing its part to make pos­si­ble the uni­fi­ca­tion of Japan in the fol­low­ing cen­tu­ry.

Kurusu in hand, these bateren argued that one should devote one­self to Deusu in order to avoid eter­nal con­dem­na­tion to inheruno and gain admis­sion to paraiso. There were con­verts, though per­haps not in num­bers as large as expect­ed. Then as now, the Japan­ese had their own way of going about things, but in the six­teenth cen­tu­ry, they had rulers inclined to crack down hard on sus­pi­cious for­eign influ­ence. The last sec­tion of the video con­tains tes­ti­mo­ny of a show­down staged between Chris­tian­i­ty and Bud­dhism, a debate in which the bateren seemed to have put on a poor show. Defeat­ed, they were either expelled or exe­cut­ed, and not long there­after, Japan closed the doa — as they now call it — for a cou­ple more cen­turies.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear the First Japan­ese Vis­i­tor to the Unit­ed States & Europe Describe Life in the West (1860–1862)

The His­to­ry of Ancient Japan: The Sto­ry of How Japan Began, Told by Those Who Wit­nessed It (297‑1274)

What Hap­pens When a Japan­ese Wood­block Artist Depicts Life in Lon­don in 1866, Despite Nev­er Hav­ing Set Foot There

A Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca (1861): Fea­tures George Wash­ing­ton Punch­ing Tigers, John Adams Slay­ing Snakes & Oth­er Fan­tas­tic Scenes

The 17th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Samu­rai Who Sailed to Europe, Met the Pope & Became a Roman Cit­i­zen

Hear an Ancient Chi­nese His­to­ri­an Describe The Roman Empire (and Oth­er Voic­es of the Past)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.