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The Scent of History – Frankincense By Brigadier Hugh Willing When I was posted to Oman in 2002 as the Defence Attaché in the British Embassy in Muscat, one of the first tasks I was given was to procure a sizeable quantity of frankincense for St George’s Chapel at Windsor. I was unfamiliar with the ‘Bells and Smells’ rituals of the Church in England, thinking that this was a legacy left only for the Catholics or Monastic orders. But procuring frankincense in Oman was one of my simpler tasks as the souks of Oman are still awash with the stuff. Not only is it easily procured in Oman but it is also a surviving symbol of one of the very first traded commodities in the developed world. Its recorded origins go back to the Pharaohs of Egypt, at least two thousand years BC, and certainly to the time of the Queen of Sheba, who ruled over one of the most important and ancient civilizations in the known world a thousand years later in the Hadramout (modern-day Yemen) which included the Dhofar region of Southern Oman. Frankincense, or Luban in Arabic, is a gum that is tapped from a strange-looking tree (Boswellia Sacra) that grows in a small and specific coastal area of South-eastern Arabia and on the island of Socotra, which is touched by the Hareef or the southeast monsoon. It can only grow in a very dry climate taking its moisture from the warm mists that blow in off the Indian Ocean. It can’t be grown artificially from seed nor can it be transplanted; only nature knows how to propagate the Luban tree, and the best frankincense comes from the Dhofar.There is nothing about this non-descript tree to suggest that it is the source of a substance which, for at least five millennia, was one of the most prized substances in the civilized world,
valued as highly as gold and even the gift of kings. Frankincense, which gets its modern name from the Frankish crusading knights who discovered its use in the Byzantine churches of the Holy Land, was used in staggering quantities. According to ancient documents, the annual consumption of incense in the temple of Baal at Babylon was two tons. Some 3,000 years ago, Dhofar was reported to export hundreds of tons of the raw incense every year, mostly taken by camel caravan across the ‘Empty Quarter’ to the markets of the Mediterranean.Whilst frankincense has a wonderful fragrance, surely the quintessential aroma of Arabia, it is hard to understand rationally why the great cultures of the Near East and Mediterranean valued it so highly. The answer is both philosophical and functional. The ancient world believed that the smoke of incense carried their prayers to heaven. And frankincense had a practical function as well. It was a kind of antiseptic used to embalm corpses. When the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun was opened in 1922, one of the sealed flasks released a perceptible whiff of incense even after 3,300 years. During the time of the Black Death from 1603 to 1666, it was noted that the embalmers did not fall prey to the diseases from which their clients had died. Whilst not understood at the time, the perfumers of the period were immune to plague since they were constantly surrounded by incense and oils. Today in the palm-lined souks of Salalah, the stallholders selling frankincense are doing a brisk trade. And it is good to know that its royal and religious connections – and not just in St. George’s Chapel, are obviously still alive and well to this day.
Jane Willing and a Frankincense tree. E-Zine 2013
Volume 5 Issue 3 | 37
