Ancient pots found near Pompeii contain 2500-year-old honey
A mysterious residue inside a set of ancient Greek pots from Paestum, Italy, has now been identified as honey thanks to modern chemical analysis
By James Woodford
30 July 2025
An ancient Greek bronze jar on display at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford that was found to contain honey
American Chemical Society
The contents of an ancient Greek pot found in a shrine near Pompeii are testament to the longevity of a jar of honey.
In 1954, a Greek burial shrine dating to around 520 BC was discovered in Paestum, Italy, about 70 kilometres south of Pompeii.
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There were eight pots in the shrine containing a sticky residue, whose identity has been a mystery ever since their discovery.
Honey was an early suspect in tests carried out on the contents of one of the pots between the 1950s and 1980s, says Luciana Carvalho at the University of Oxford.
Three separate teams studied the residue but concluded that the jars held animal or vegetable fat contaminated with pollen and insect parts, rather than honey.
