I think it was some kind of narcotic. They had a show on it on tv.
Perhaps Cocaine??
Mystery Hill, a megalithic site on a knoll in, hmm, I think NH (I've been there, but was in Vermont that day also), is obviously kin to sites of prehistoric Europe. Derided as the construction of a family which used to own the property, the great antiquity of the structures was shown through radiocarbon dating of an internal hearth by some university researchers (Pennsylvania I think).The Mystery of the Cocaine MummiesA German scientist, Dr Svetla Balabanova, discovered that the body of Henut Taui contained large quantities of cocaine and nicotine. At 35 times the dose for smokers, the amounts of nicotine she had found in Egyptian mummies were potentially lethal. The high doses of nicotine in Egyptian bodies could be explained if the tobacco - as well as being consumed - had also been used in mummification. Ramses II died in 1213BC, a few hundred years before Henut Taui. When he was mummified, every possible skill and every rare ingredient was used by the embalmers to try to preserve his body for eternity. For where Henut Tuai was only a preistess, Ramses was arguably the mightiest of all the Pharaohs.
The bandages wrapped around the mummy needed replacing, so botanists were given pieces of the fabric to analyse what it was made of. One found some plant fragments in her piece, and took a closer look. Emerging on the slide, according to her experience, were the unmistakable features - the tiny crystals and filaments - of a plant that couldn't possibly be there.
Sandy Knapp thought the plant from Ramses was more likely to be another member of the tobacco family, which is known to have existed in ancient Egypt, such as henbane, mandrake or belladonna. Michelle Lescot was convinced that her identification had been correct. But she couldn't help with the cocaine, for it seemed not even one botanist believed in a disappearing coca plant. There are actually species of the coca family which grow in Africa, but only the South American species has ever been shown to contain the drug.
If tobacco from Mexico or coca from the Andes was carried across an ocean, it apparently need not have been the Atlantic. According to Alice Kehoe, a number of other American plants mysteriously turn up outside the "sealed" continent. But they are found on the other side of the Pacific.
Discovery of minute strands of silk found in the hair of a mummy from Luxor could suggest the trade stretching from Egypt to the Pacific. For silk at this time was only known to come from China. Martin Bernal argues that it would be a pity to replace earlier cultural arrogance with an arrogant belief in progress.
For in Manchester, the mummies under the care of Rosalie David, the Egyptologist once so sure that Balabanova had made a mistake, produced some odd results of their own.
Little wonder then, that a story that began with one scientist, a few mummies and some routine tests, in no time at all could upset whole areas of knowledge we thought we could take for granted.