When British archaeologists pried open the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, they found petals scattered across the young pharaoh’s body. Vivid, blue-tinted petals from a flower immortalized on ancient scrolls, carved into temple walls, and whispered about in myth: the blue lotus. For over 3,000 years, this blossom floated through Egyptian religion, ritual, and, some say, intoxication.
According to legend, a mix of blue lotus and wine had psychedelic properties that fueled ancient Egyptian parties. It’s not surprising then to hear that some plant resembling the ancient blue lotus is now sold online, marketed as a miracle flower that can be smoked or infused as herbal tea.
But Liam McEvoy, an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, has found evidence that this is all bogus: the flower that flooded online marketplaces is a cheap rip-off of the revered Egyptian plant.
“The stuff being sold online is not the same,” McEvoy in a press release. “Our findings suggest the blue lotus is actually unique in comparison to other water lilies.”
Ancient Ritual, Modern Science
McEvoy’s investigation began, unexpectedly, with a BBC documentary. Sacred Weeds, a psychedelic-tinged TV series from the late ’90s, showed volunteers drinking lotus-infused wine and running giddily through the rain. The show was rather campy, but he was not convinced it was the real deal. So he set out to prove it.
With help from Berkeley’s Center for the Science of Psychedelics and its Department of Chemistry, he tracked down a verified Nymphaea Caerulea (the Egyptian blue lotus) specimen. That was no small task. The construction of the Aswan Dam disrupted the flower’s natural habitat, pushing it to the brink of extinction. Botanical gardens worldwide had none to spare.
So he turned to Reddit.
There, he found a user in Arizona who claimed to have the blue lotus. They shipped McEvoy a living plant, which botanists confirmed was authentic. It now blooms in the UC Botanical Garden—the only verified Egyptian blue lotus in a U.S. university collection, McEvoy believes.
To compare, he also bought dried “blue lotus” petals from Etsy, a site flooded with snake oil merchants promising euphoric experiences for $20 to $150 a bag.
Etsy store listings for blue lotus petals.
McEvoy and chemists Evan Williams and Anthony Iavarone then analyzed both samples using mass spectrometry. They were hunting for nuciferine, the compound long believed to be the flower’s key psychoactive ingredient.
The result: the verified lotus contained far more nuciferine than the online samples, which likely came from common, non-psychoactive lily species.
“I said, ‘I knew it!’” McEvoy recalled.
Nymphaea Caerulea. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Retracing the Ritual
McEvoy then began questioning the overarching myth itself: how was the blue lotus actually consumed in ancient times?
While modern supplements boast “wine infusions,” the flower’s tough, waxy surface may have made it difficult for alcohol to extract its psychoactive alkaloids.
“We’re beginning to think the ancient Egyptians didn’t just put it into wine,” McEvoy said. “We hypothesize they actually created an infused oil, which was later added to wine.”
This hypothesis is grounded in chemistry. Nuciferine is fat-soluble—meaning it dissolves more readily in oil than in wine. That suggests the ceremonial beverages once used in Egyptian festivals may have been far more complex than today’s DIY flower-soaks.
Such a theory would align with what we know of Egypt’s Hathoric Festival of Drunkenness, where celebrants drank until they passed out—only to awaken, according to myth, in the presence of the goddess Hathor.
“It’s always depicted with the same petal shape,” McEvoy said. “It’s always depicted with the spots on the bottom of the sepals. It’s a very specific plant.”
The funerary stele of Tembu depicting the lotus several times, most of which are wrapped around wine jars. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
To test his theory, McEvoy hopes to conduct a chemical analysis on a 3,000-year-old goblet in Berkeley’s Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. If remnants of fatty molecules are found—echoes of an oil infusion—it would be a striking piece of evidence.
He also plans to perform liquid chromatography on the flower samples, breaking them down further to isolate and identify every compound present. It’s a gold standard test in analytical chemistry and could strengthen the case that Nymphaea caerulea truly was, and remains, unlike any other lily.
Beyond the Lotus
McEvoy graduates this fall and plans to enter the world of intellectual property law. But before he leaves, he hopes to complete these final experiments.
To him, this project is not just about proving what ancient Egyptians did or didn’t do with a flower. It’s about how science can rescue truth from myth—and from misinformation.
“I wanted to let the plant tell its story and contribute to a discussion where there’s all this pseudoscience floating around—pseudoscience that makes some people a lot of money,” he said.
That story—of a flower’s journey from the sacred pools of ancient temples to internet herbal shops—isn’t over yet. But with each test tube and petal, it’s getting clearer.
“A rare example,” McEvoy said, “of how ancient magic and modern science can come together to deepen our understanding of the nature that has always surrounded us.”
