He noticed the same blue water lilies (Nymphaea caerulea) depicted on Karnak’s pillars were also found as a garland around the golden neck of Tutankhamun, when the pharaoh’s tomb was first opened in 1922.12 Another incarnation of Osiris, the blue water lily is now extremely rare in the wild, but once grew abundantly on the shallow banks of the Nile. It was considered Ancient Egypt’s most sacred plant. And with the active compounds, apomorphine and nuciferin, it was full of psychoactive possibility.
