The British Museum

Map of incense distribution and trade routes.

The frankincense tree is small, with smooth bark and leaves like a bay. The resin is obtained by making a deep, longitudinal incision in the trunk of the tree. When the tree is cut, a sticky, white resin oozes out onto the trunk and congeals with exposure to the air. Once the resin has hardened sufficiently after a number of weeks, it is scraped off the tree into baskets. A second incision is then made but the quality of the incense from the second harvest is inferior to the first. At the third harvest, the resin forms into yellow "tears", which produces the best incense. The season for gathering frankincense is April to mid-September. According to Herodotus, harvesting the frankincense was not an easy task; he claimed that "the bushes that grow frankincense are guarded by tiny winged snakes, of dappled colour, and there are great numbers of them around each bush."

J. Hassell

Frankincense tree in Dhofar Oman.

Frankincense burns with a white, fragrant smoke and was thought to carry prayers to heaven. The Greeks and Romans burned it as an offering to their gods, and the Egyptians buried it in their royal tombs. The smoke was used to fumigate clothes and homes, repel insects and counter the bad smells that were common before modern sanitation. Frankincense was also thought to have certain medicinal properties. It was used as a diuretic, to cleanse the kidneys, to stop internal and external bleeding, to aid in fat elimination and to cure forgetfulness. Frankincense is still harvested in Yemen and is on sale in vast quantities in the markets. Dioscorides, writing in the first century AD, tells us that frankincense bark was also used as an aromatic, "the best bark is thick, fat, fragrant, new, smooth and neither coarse nor thin", but warns that it was "counterfeited by mixing it with pine cones." Incense bark was probably also widely traded in antiquity; it is available today in the spice markets of Yemen, where it is more expensive than frankincense resin.

Myrrh

The British Museum

Frankincense and myrrh.

Myrrh is the resin of a tree, Commiphora myrrha, which grows in South Arabia and Somalia. Myrrh has a wider distribution than frankincense in South Arabia. It grows in the Yemeni mountains west of Hadramawt but also grows widely as far east as Dhofar and as far north as Asir. The trees do not reach more than nine feet high; they are of sturdy build with rough bark and thorny branches. As with frankincense, myrrh is harvested by making an incision in the trunk of the tree. The gum seeps out of the incision and drips down the bark. Mats are sometimes spread underneath the tree to catch the resin. Myrrh flows as a pale yellow liquid but hardens into reddish-brown tears. Pliny described the harvesting and sale of myrrh as follows:

The myrrh-producing tree is likewise tapped twice a year, at the same seasons as the frankincense tree, but in its case the incisions are made all the way up from the root to those of the branches that are strong enough to bear it. But before it is tapped the tree exudes of its own accord a juice called stacte, which is the most highly valued of all myrrh. Next after this comes the cultivated kind, and also the better variety of the wild kind, the one tapped in summer. It is brought up all over the district from the common people and packed into leather bags; and our perfumers have no difficulty in distinguishing the different sorts by the evidence of the scent and consistency. There are a great many varieties.... Broadly speaking, however, myrrh is of good quality if it comes in small pieces of irregular shape, forming in the solidifying of the juice as it turns white and dries up, and in its showing white marks like fingernails when it is broken, and having a slightly bitter taste. The prices vary with demand; that of stacte ranges from 3 denarii to 50 denarii the pound. Myrrh is adulterated with lumps of lentisk resin and with gum: the latter can be detected by its sticking to the teeth.

There are very few references to incense in the thousands of inscriptions that have been discovered in South Arabia. A cuboid incense burner in the British Museum collection, possibly dating to the fifth or fourth century BC, is especially important because the four sides are inscribed with the names of four different sorts of incense.