forests of acacia, moringa, and euphorbia. From earliest times it has been, together with frankincense, a constitutent of incense, perfumes, and ointments. It was an ingredient of the Hebrew anointing oil (Exod. XXX), and was also one of the numerous components of the celebrated kyphi of the Egyptians, a preparation used in fumigations, medicine, and embalming. It was the object of numerous trading expeditions of the Egyptian kings to the “ Land of Punt.” A monement of Sahure, 28th century B. C., records receipts of 80,000 measures of myrrh from Punt. The expedition of Hatshepsut (15th century B. C.) again records myrrh as the most important cargo; its list in the “ marvels of the country of Punt ” was as follows: All goodly fragrant woods of God’s Land, heaps of myrrh-resin, fresh myrrh trees, ebony, pure ivory, green gold of Emu, cinnamon wood, khesyt wood, ihmut incense, sonter incense, eye cosmetic, apes, monkeys, dogs, skins of southern panther, natives and their children. The inscription adds: “ Never was brought the like of this for any king who has been since the beginning.” (Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, II, 109; Flückiger and Hanbury, op. cit., 140–6.)
Pliny (XII, 35) gives a clear account of the gathering of the gum: “ Incisions are made in the myrrh-tree twice a year, and at the same season as the incense-tree; but in the case of the myrrh-tree they are made all the way up from the root as far as the branches which are able to bear it. The tree spontaneously exudes, before the incision is made, a liquid which bears the name of stacte (stazo, to drop) and to which there is no myrrh that is superior. Second only in quality to this is the cultivated myrrh; of the wild or forest kind, the best is that which is gathered in summer.”
Stacte, he says, sold as high as 40 denarrii the pound; cultivated myrrh, at a maximum of 11 denarii; Erythraean at 16, and odoraria at 14. And he concludes: “They give no tithes of myrrh to the god, because it is the produce of other countries as well; but the growers pay the fourth part of it to the king of the Gebanitae. Myrrh is bought up indescriminately by the common people and then packed into bags; but our perfumers separate it without any difficulty, the principal tests of its goodness being its unctuousness and its aromatic smell.
“There are several kinds of myrrh: the first among the wild myrrhs is the Troglodytic; and the next are the Minaean, which includes the aromatic, and that of Ausaritis, in the kingdom of the Gebanitae. A third kind is the Dianitic, and a fourth is the mixed myrrh, or collatitia . . . a fifth again is the Sambracenian, which is brought from a city in the kingdom of the Sabaei, near the sea; and a
