Ancient Aromas - The BAS Library
Login
Home > Magazines > Bible Review > June 1991

Ancient Aromas

Good and bad

By Kjeld Nielsen

The Roman poet Ovid, in Metamorphosis (10:298–518), relates a story that sensitively reflects much about one of the best-known aromatic substances in the ancient world, myrrh. In the story, Myrrha, the beautiful daughter of the king of Cyprus, falls in love with her father. She disguises herself and proceeds to seduce him. When the king discovers what his daughter has done, he decides he must kill her. Frightened, Myrrha flees, asking the gods for protection. The gods transform her into a myrrh tree; in that way she escapes and avoids being killed. She is pregnant, however. Accordingly, nine months […]

Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username

Footnotes

1.

See Hershel Shanks, “BAR Interview: Avraham Biran—Twenty Years of Digging at Tel Dan,” BAR 13:04.

2.

According to the New Jewish Publication Society (NJPS) translation. Others translate “seat of mercy” instead of “cover.”

Endnotes

1.

As for the connection between Adonis and Tammuz, see W.W.G. Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun (Leipzig: J.C. Henrichs, 1911) pp. 352–371.

2.

James H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt II (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1906), p. 113.

3.

Jorden A. Knudtzon, Die El-amarna Tafeln (Leipzig: J.C. Heinrichs, 1915), no. 269, line 16.

4.

Herman Grapow et al., Ubersetzung der medizinischen Texte, (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1958).

5.

Kjeld Nielsen, Incense in Ancient Israel (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986), p. 115, note 160.

6.

See Raymond O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969). The texts date from the Vth and VIth Dynasties, the second half of the third millennium B.C. See Alan Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964), p. 87.

7.

Yigal Shiloh, “South Arabian Inscriptions from the City of David, Jerusalem,” Palestinian Exploration Quarterly (PEQ) 119 (1987), pp. 9–18.

8.

Nielsen, Incense in Ancient Israel, pp. 47–48.

9.

See M.D. Fowler, “Excavated Incense Burners: A Case For Identifying a Site as Sacred?” PEQ 117 (1985), pp. 25–29.

10.

See Helga Weippert, “Palästina in vorhellenistischer Zeit,” in Handbuch der Archaeologie, Vorderasien II, ed. Ulrich Hausmann (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1989), vol. 1, pp. 447–448.