Food for the Gods
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Food for the Gods

New Light on the Ancient Incense Trade

D. P. S. Peacock, A. C. S. Peacock, David Williams, A. C. S. Peacock, David Williams

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eBook - ePub

Food for the Gods

New Light on the Ancient Incense Trade

D. P. S. Peacock, A. C. S. Peacock, David Williams, A. C. S. Peacock, David Williams

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About This Book

The story of incense is one of the most intriguing in both eastern and western culture. From the first millennium BC to the present day it has been sought after and valued on a par with precious metals or gems. Although incense was a luxury, it was consumed in prodigious quantities by the ancient world, in temples and at funerals, but also in private homes. The papers in this volume look at the role of incense, primarily - though not exclusively - during the Roman period. It is hoped that they will provide a starting point for further research into this important, but neglected, area of social and economic archaeology.

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Publisher
Oxbow Books
Year
2006
ISBN
9781782974451

Chapter 1: Introduction

David Peacock and David Williams
The story of incense is one of the most intriguing in both eastern and western culture. From the first millennium BC to the present day it has been sought after and valued on a par with precious metals or gems. While there was undoubtedly symbolism in the choice of the three Sages’ gifts to the infant Christ, it is interesting to note that frankincense and myrrh, as well as gold, were thought worthy markers of this epoch making event. The history of the exploitation of the resins of Boswellia and Commiphora trees is outlined by Caroline Singer who relates how these unprepossessing plants produced a substance sought by emperors, priests, apothecaries and the common man alike. Throughout its long history it was a luxury associated with prestige and religion: the story is almost stranger than fiction. She gives a comprehensive account of the history of incense discussing the demand, the production and the growing areas as well as the means of distribution. As Myra Shackley shows, in the final chapter, its importance in religion persists to this day and it is used by perfumers, aromatherapists and in the production of medicines. Finally she assesses the potential for incense driven tourism. Its production is a significant element in the economy of the southern Arabian peninsular and modern frankincense routes bear an uncanny resemblance to the ancient.
Thus, while some of the papers in this volume attempt to paint a broad picture, emulating and updating Nigel Groom’s seminal work Frankincense and Myrrh: A Study of the Arabian Incense Trade, our main, but not sole, focus is on the Roman period and the archaeology of incense. While the texts are informative they tell but part of the story and if the study is to progress we need the supplementary information that only archaeology can furnish. Here there is a problem because, unlike many luxury items–fine pottery, metals or even textiles, it is seldom preserved in the archaeological record. A small fragment of frankincense, probably Islamic rather than Roman in date, was found in the recent excavations at Quseir al-Qadim, but it is in any case a single small fragment from an extensive excavation conducted over 5 years. Incense can be preserved in archaeological quantities, but it was so valuable that it was conserved and consumed rather than being discarded as rubbish. The chances of finding incense are considerably less than those of finding gold. Gold is a stable enduring material, incense requires suitable conditions of aridity or wetness to ensure its survival. If we are to study the use and distribution of incense this must usually be done indirectly, by looking for clues in more durable media. Fortunately, incense requires special apparatus for burning and the dissemination of aroma so that incense burners are without doubt a major means of getting to grips with the problem. Unfortunately, there have been few studies, partly because it is hard to be certain that an artefact would have been used for this purpose. The work of Hallet (1990) on Saudi Arabian steatite industries is a model for the Islamic period, and extraction may also have been practised in the Eastern desert of Egypt (Harrell and Brown 2000). Unfortunately, the use of steatite seems to be restricted to the Islamic period in the Near East and no Roman vessels have been found in this or any other lithic material. It seems that pottery vessels may have been used, or the incense burned in the specially made depression on the top of Roman altars. There must be organic material preserved in the pores of such loci and a programme of organic analysis might be helpful in both identifying the practice and the type of incense burned. However, in the absence of such work much can be done by purely archaeological methods. The chapter by Joanna Bird is an exemplary lesson on what can be achieved and we are privileged to republish this important work, with a few minor updates. Ceramic vessels with Mithraic motifs attest, forcefully, its role in Mithraic ceremonies.
Our chapter on ballast also illustrates a new approach to the problem of the incense trade. When we began our geochemical study we imagined that the picture would be a complex one with many different sources reflecting what we believed might have been cabotage along the coasts of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. We were astounded to find that the ballast dumps along the Egyptian coast were made up of material from but two sources: 70% Qana’, 30% Aden. As Qana’ was above all the major port for incense, to which it was taken ‘as to a warehouse’, we conclude that the ballast was the result of ships laden with light incense which would requiring balancing. The concentration of Yemeni ballast in Egypt suggests a maritime route for incense. It would have travelled up the Red Sea, across the desert to the Nile thence to Alexandria from where it would travel to the major cities of the Mediterranean. The seaways would have been considerably easier and more ecomomic than the overland caravan route along the length of the Arabian peninsular to Gaza discussed by Pliny (Natural History, 12, 32). The question now remains which was the more important. And this is something only archaeology can attempt to answer, which must be a subject for future research.
Of course the incense trade cannot be studied in isolation. Sunil Gupta argues partly from the little known ancient Indian economic treatise, the Arthasastra, and from his own work at Kamrej, that frankincense exports from the HÌŁadÌŁramawt stimulated need for reciprocal supplies in a burgeoning economy. Noting significant quantities of Indian wares found on sites such as Khor Rori, Qana’ and, to some extent, Egypt, he concludes that the balance of payment problem may have been partly met by an increased export to Arabia of Indian goods such as cereals, sesame oil, cloth and iron. He sees the situation as analogous to the British substitution of opium for gold, in the purchase of China tea during the 19th Century. The ports of southern Yemen were pivotal in this economic activity. At the centre of the incense trade lies Qana’ and we are privileged to include a chapter by Alexander Sedov contributing an important new synthesis of the trading activities of the port based largely on his own analysis of the ceramic finds from recent excavations. He gives a fully documented account of the site: structures, stratigraphy, pottery and coins followed by an evaluation of their significance in the study of incense. Particularly striking is the discovery of incense warehouses at Qana’, some with the precious commodity still in them. He also gives a valuable account of the Yemeni island of Socotra which was a source of aloe, frankincense and cinnabar. Finally he discusses the role of Khor Rori in Oman. In each case the starting point is his own original research, giving a valuable resumĂ© of the findings of the most recent archaeological research in these regions. Incense is not seen in isolation but as part of a far reaching trade network evidenced by pottery and particularly amphorae from Italy, Rhodes and later Aqaba in Jordan. The incense trade can now be seen in its broader perspective.
Somaliland was also an important production area as Caroline Singer emphasises. In Chapter 7 we examine this in relation to Aksumite Adulis, now in Eritrea. It is suggested on the basis of literary sources backed by some tentative archaeological evidence, that Adulis could have been an intermediary, shipping aromatics northwards to Alexandria and Ayla (Aqaba). Recent fieldwork has resolved the question of the whereabouts of the Aksumite harbour of Adulis and of Adulis of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea. We include a brief resumé of the main findings of this recent Eritro-British project.
One point to emerge forcibly from this collection of papers is the importance of southern Yemen in Rome’s connection with India and the east. Salles (1993) has already claimed it is unlikely that a cargo of western products shipped at Myos Hormos would have reached Muziris on the same boat at the end of a straight voyage, and vice-versa –direct shipments did certainly exist, but the argument here is that they were not a rule. In his reading of the Periplus he sees a clear segmentation of the journey. The Periplus (26:.31–2) clearly states before the sack of Aden (soon before the book was written in the mid first century AD) vessels from India and Egypt met at this port as neither dared to make the full voyage. The new evidence in this book supports the view that Yemen was the trade hub, but it appears that after the demise of Aden this role was assumed by Qana’. We do not deny that the direct route from Egypt to India would have been feasible, albeit with watering and provision stops, but there is no evidence from archaeology, or from the literature, to suggest it was the norm.
This book answers some questions but raises many more. If it stimulates more research in this important, but neglected, area of social and economic archaeology, it will have served a useful purpose.
 
Bibliography
Hallet, J., 1990. The early Islamic soft stone industry. Unpublished M.Phil. University of Oxford.
Harrell, J.A. and Max Brown, V., 2000. Discovery of a steatite baram industry of the medieval Islamic period in Egypt’s Eastern desert. Abstract of paper delivered to American Research Center Egypt, Berkeley.
Salles, J.-F., 1993. The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea and the Arab-Persian Gulf. Topoi, 3 (2), 493–523.

Chapter 2: The Incense Kingdoms of Yemen:

An Outline History of the South Arabian Incense Trade

Caroline Singer
The overland trade in aromatics between South Arabia–that is, principally, the kingdoms of pre-Islamic Yemen–and the civilizations of Mesopotamia, Assyria, the Levant, the Mediterranean and Egypt, began in earnest at the start of the 1st millennium BC, and had an incalculable effect on the economic, cultural and linguistic life of the Middle East. However, even a cursory search among the sacred literature of ancient Egypt and Sumeria, Old Testament texts or the cuneiform records of Mesopotamia, reveals the importance of incense for religious and royal ceremonies long before the frankincense merchants started to arrive with their camel-trains from southern Arabia, in c. 10th to 8th century BC. The very early use of incense in Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, at least from the third millennium onwards, relied on sources much closer to home. The ‘incense’mentioned so often in the Pentateuch1 for example, was likely to have consisted of balsams, scented woods and herbs from the Levant, rather than frankincense from South Arabia. In Mycenaean Greece during the 14th and 13th centuries BC, scented oils, fragrant gums and incenses were used in funerals and worship, and were either procured from Phoenician traders, or manufactured from locally-produced oils and aromatic plants in palaces such as Knossos, Pylos and Zakro.
In ancient Egypt, the elaborate rituals prescribed in the Book of the Dead frequently stipulated the use of incense.2 The Egyptians at this early stage obtained their supplies of frankincense and myrrh from the ‘Land of Punt’, a mysterious region in the Horn of Africa, which has still not been satisfactorily identified: scholars have located it anywhere from Uganda to Ethiopia.3 From approximately 2500 to 1150 BC the Pharaohs imported gold, aromatics and other luxuries from Punt, sailing ships along the Red Sea coast down to Eritrea and Somalia. The most fruitful area seems to have been in northern Somalia, where frankincense and myrrh trees still grow abundantly. In the funerary temple of Queen Hatshepsut, c.1480 BC at Deir el-Bahari in Luxor, texts and wall paintings tell of an expedition to the Land of Punt to fetch ‘fresh incense’ and ‘living incense trees’ from the ‘incense terraces of Punt’. The aim of this undertaking was to transport live frankincense and myrrh trees, and re-plant them in Egypt, thus securing a local supply of fragrant resin for religious rituals, without having to pay the high prices charged by the African merchants. The mission ultimately failed, because frankincense and myrrh trees require specific conditions in order to grow (see p. 8), none of which Egypt could provide.
The trade between Egypt and Punt seems to have gone into decline from c. 12th century BC. The rise of controlled, regular commercial exchange between South Arabia and the civilisations of the north, including Egypt, began between the 10th and 8th centuries BC. This was made possible by several converging factors–social, technological and economic–which together created the right conditions for an organised system of long-distance trade.
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Fig. 2.1. The southern sluice-gate of the Mārib Dam. An irrigation system at Mārib is thought to have been in operation from c. 3000 BC.
By the first millennium BC, the settled people of inland South Arabia had established a successful way of life based on the skilful management of highly specialised irrigation systems, and the prosperity and growth of these agricultural settlements gave rise to political, economic and social integration (Fig. 2.1). It was only when the South Arabians had the economic and social structures in place to provide a secure system of maintained roads, with well-stocked oases and shelters along the route, plus a regular supply of pack-animals, that they turned to commerce as a means of further enrichment. Donkeys had long been used to transport goods from one settlement to another, but the large-scale, highly organised exchange of commercial quantities of goods over long distances would not have been possible without one of the greatest technological advances in history: the domestication of the camel. Opinions differ as to the exact date of the camel’s domestication, but it has been suggested that it began in southern Arabia during the second millennium BC.4 This process, by which the camel became harnessed first as a pack animal and then as a riding animal, allowed the inhabitants of settlements and civilisations that had previously been separated by deserts and long distances, to meet, exchange goods, and develop a rich cultural and commercial interchange.
The two most important and most valuable commodities...

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