INCENSE commonest subject carved or painted in the interiors of the temples is that of some contemporary Phrah or Pharaoh worshipping the presiding deity with oblations of gold and silver vessels, rich vestments, gems, the firstlings of the flock and herd, cakes, fruits, flowers, wine, anointing oil, and incense. Generally he holds in one hand the censer, and with the other darts the pastils or osselebs of incense into it ; sometimes he offers incense in one hand and makes the libation of wine with the other. One of the best known of these representations is that carved on the memorial stone placed by Thothmes IV. (1533 B.C.) on the breast of the Sphinx at Gizeh. 1 The tablet represents Thothmes before his guardian deity, the sun-god Ra, pour ing a libation of wine on one side and offering incense on the other. The ancient Egyptians used various substances as incense. They worshipped Ra at sunrise with resin, at mid-day with myrrh, and at sunset with an elaborate confection called kuphi, compounded of no fewer than sixteen ingredients, among which were honey, wine, raisins, resin, myrrh, and sweet calamus. While it was being mixed, holy writings were read to those engaged in the operation. According to Plutarch, apart from its mystic virtues arising from the magical combination of 4 x 4, its sweet odour had a benign physiological effect on those who offered it. 2 The censer used was a hemispherical cup or bowl of bronze, supported by a long handle, fashioned at one end like an open hand, in which the bowl was, as it were, held, while the other end within which the pastils of incense were kept was shaped into the hawk s head crowned with a disk, as the symbol of Ra. 3 In embalming their dead the Egyptians filled the cavity of the belly with every sort of spicery, except frankincense (Herod., ii. 86), which was regarded as specially consecrated to the worship of the gods. In the burnt offerings of male kine to Isis, the carcase of the steer, after evisceration, was rilled with fine bread, honey, raisins, figs, frankincense, myrrh, and other aromatics, and thus stuffed was roasted, being basted all the while by pouring over it large quantities of sweet oil, and then eaten with great festivity. How important the consumption of frankincense in the worship of the gods became in Egypt is shown by two of its monuments, which are of the greatest interest and value for the light they throw on the early history of the commerce of the Indian Ocean. One is an inscription in the rocky valley of Hammamat, through which the desert road from the Red Sea to the valley of Egypt opens on the green fields and palm groves of the river Nile near Coptos. It was cut on the rocks by an Egyptian nobleman named Hannu, who states that he was sent by Pharaoh Sankhara, 2500 B.C., with a force gathered out of the Thebaid, from Coptos to the Red Sea, there to take command of a naval expedition to the Holy Land of Punt, " to bring back odoriferous gums." Punt is identified with the Somali country, which is now known to be the native country of the trees that yield the bulk of the frankincense of commerce. The other bears the record of a second expedition to the same land of Punt, undertaken by command of Queen Hasop, 1600 B.C. It is preserved in the vividly chiselled and richly coloured decorations which portray the history of the reign of this famous Pharaoh on the walls of the " Stage Temple " at Thebes. The temple is now in ruins, but the entire series of gorgeous pictures recording the expedition to "the balsam land of Pant," from its leaving to its returning to Thebes, still remains intact and undefaced. 4 1 Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, i. 77-81, 414-419. 2 Plutarch, De Iside ef. Osiride, c. 52. In Parthey s edition (Berlin, 1850) other recipes for the manufacture of kuphi, by Galen an 1 Dioscorides, are given ; also some results of the editor s own ex periments. 3 Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, i. 493 ; ii. 49, 398-400, 414 416. 4 Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaoh-s, i., 303-312. These are the only authenticated instances of the export of incense trees from the Somali country until Colonel Playfair, then political agent at Aden, in 1862-64, col lected and sent to Bombay the specimens from which Dr Birdwood prepared his descriptions of them for the Linnean Society in 1868. King Antigonus is said to have had a branch of the true frankincense tree sent to him. Homer tells us that the Egyptians of his time were emphatically a nation of druggists (Od. iv. 229, 230). This characteristic, in which, as in many others, they remarkably resemble the Hindus, the Egyptians have maintained to the present day ; and, although they have changed their religion, the use of incense among them continues to be as familiar and formal as ever. The kohl or black powder with which the modern, like the ancient, Egyptian ladies paint their languishing eyelids, is nothing but the smeeth of charred frankincense, or other odoriferous resin, which is brought with frankincense, and phials of water from the well of Zem-zem, by the returning pilgrims from Mecca. They also melt frankincense as a depilatory, and smear their hands with a paste into the composition of which frankincense enters, for the purpose of communi cating to them an attractive perfume. Herodotus (iv. 75) describes a similar artifice as practised by the women of Scythia (compare also Judith x. 3, 4). In cold weather the Egyptians warm their rooms by placing in them a brazier, " chafing-dish," or " standing-dish," filled with charcoal, in which incense is burnt ; and in hot weather they refresh them by occasionally swinging a hand censer by a chain through them frankincense, benzoin, and aloe wood being chiefly used for the purpose. 5 In the authorized version of the Bible, the word "incense " translates two wholly distinct Hebrew words. In various passages in the latter portion of Isaiah (xl.-lxvi.), in Jere miah, and in Chronicles, it represents the Hebrew lebdnah, more usually rendered "frankincense"; elsewhere the original word is ketoreth (Ex. xxx. 8, 9, Lev. x. 1, Num. vii. 14, <fec.), a derivative of the verb hitter (Pi.) or hiktir (Hiph.), which verb is used, not only in Ex. xxx. 7, but also in Lev. i, 9, iii. 11, ix. 13, and many other passages, to denote the process by which the "savour of satisfac tion " in any burnt offering, whether of flesh or of incense is produced. Sometimes in the authorized version (as in 1 Kings iii. 3, 1 Sam. ii. 28) it is made to mean ex plicitly the burning of incense with only doubtful pro priety. The expression " incense (ketoreth) of rams " in Ps. Ixvi. 15 and the allusion in Ps. cxli. 2 ought both to be understood, most probably, of ordinary burnt offerings. 6 The " incense" (ketoreth), or " incense of sweet scents" (ketoreth sammim), called, in Ex. xxx. 35, " a confection after the art of the apothecary," or rather "a perfume after the art of the perfumer," which was to be regarded as most holy, and the imitation of which was prohibited under the severest penalties, was compounded of four " sweet scents " (sammim), 7 namely stacte (nataph), onycha (sheheleth), galbanum (helbenah), and " pure " or " fine " frankincense (lebonah zaccah), pounded together in equal proportions, with (perhaps) an admixture of salt (memullah). 8 It was then to be "put before the testi mony" in the "tent of meeting." It was burnt on the altar of incense (see ALTAR, vol. i. p. 640) by the priest every morning when the lamps were trimmed in the holy place, 5 See Lane, Mod. Egyptians, pp. 34, 41, 139, 187, 438 (eA 1860). 6 See Wellhausen, Gesch. Israels, i. 70 sqq., who from philological and other data infers the late date of the introduction of incense into the Jewish ritual. 7 According to Philo (Opera, i. 504, ed. Mangey), they symbolized respectively water, earth, air, and fire. 8 Other accounts of its composition, drawn from Rabbinical sources, will be found in various works on Jewish antiquities ; see, for example,
Reland, And ,/. &tcr. Vet. llcbr., pp. 39-41 (1712).
