Without disease or injury, the dead had no need for medicines. So they were not included in the tombs. For the living, Emily Teeter, Associate Curator at Chicago's Oriental Institute Museum says, we have a good record of preserved medical texts and prescriptions. Many of the ingredients, however, while we know their Egyptian names, remain unidentified. Unless a bit of residue is discovered in a labeled bowl, there is no firm way to link ingredient to name.
Teeter stresses that there is no reason to assume that any of the names refer to an unknown drug.
But the possibility is there. The record is far scantier for folk medicines. No culture is without them, but for the ancient Egyptians they were an oral tradition, never recorded in writing. If nicotine was used, there would be far less evidence to find. Ingredients used, though says Teeter, would probably be local and common.