HERBARIUM

Azallû – the plant against sorrow

A name for sorrow.
A plant we cannot securely identify.

In Mesopotamian medical writing, azallû appears as the name of a medicinal plant. One ancient commentary associates it with the forgetting of grief or worry.

That association encouraged some scholars to identify azallû as cannabis. The identification, however, remains disputed. Modern editions of Assyrian medical texts often leave azallû untranslated as “a plant”, and the surviving references do not securely establish its botanical identity or narcotic properties.

For LIBERA HERBA, uncertainty is not a reason to discard the trace.

It is the trace.

The tablets preserve a plant beside sorrow.
Later readers supplied cannabis.
The distance between those two statements matters.

The ancient world knew grief, fear and pressure. It searched plants, minerals, rituals and words for relief. But we should not turn that search into a modern psychiatric claim — or a confirmed cannabis history — when the evidence cannot carry it.

Not an antidepressant.
Not securely cannabis.

A medicinal name
at the edge of identification.

Factual Note

Azallû is an Akkadian name for a medicinal plant recorded in Mesopotamian texts. An ancient commentary has been interpreted as associating the plant with forgetting grief or worry.

Earlier scholars proposed that azallû was cannabis, and that identification continues to appear in some modern histories. It is not securely established. Current editions of Assyrian medical texts generally identify azallû only as an unspecified plant, and the surviving evidence does not prove that it had narcotic properties.

This entry therefore preserves azallû as a disputed cannabis association, not as evidence that cannabis was used as an ancient antidepressant.