Standing on a rocky landscape dotted with clusters of crocuses, two comely women pluck blossoms in this 3,500-year-old fresco uncovered on the Greek island of Santorini (ancient Thera).
This particular crocus is the Crocus sativus, and the Theran women are interested in the flower’s three saffron-rich stigmas, the part of the blossom’s pistil that receives pollen. The stigmas of about 4,000 flowers are needed to produce just one ounce of saffron powder.
Not surprisingly, saffron is one of the world’s most precious and expensive spices. Its brilliant orange-yellow color (the source of a prized dye), intense honey-like flavor (used to flavor food and drinks) and pleasant aroma (its oils are a key ingredient in some perfumes) have been highly esteemed by the Sumerians and Phoenicians as well as various Mediterranean peoples—ancient and modern—and east Asians. The earliest known reference to saffron comes in a seventh-century B.C. Assyrian botanical text.
The ancients were well aware of saffron’s medicinal properties, too. Hippocrates considered saffron to be an appetite stimulant, as well as an aid for easing digestion in adults and colic in infants. The 1500 B.C. Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical text now in the library of the University of Leipzig, recommends saffron as a remedy for kidney ailments. And herbalists throughout the Mediterranean world have used saffron to treat menstrual disorders for thousands of years.
Standing on a rocky landscape dotted with clusters of crocuses, two comely women pluck blossoms in this 3,500-year-old fresco uncovered on the Greek island of Santorini (ancient Thera).
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.
