chapter 1 Frankincense and Its Arabian Burner William Gerard Zimmerle 1 Introduction East Asia, on the other.2 As one important type of incense-related paraphernalia from Arabia, the Arabia Felix, or Happy Arabia,1 has been memori- cuboid-shaped censer is a historical and cultural alized throughout the ages on account of its smell. object that becomes the focal point in exploring Some of the best-known aromatics associated how the material culture evolves and lasts in cul- with Arabia are the twin gum resins cut from the tural perpetuity throughout the ages. Pursuing barks of the trees growing in the southernmost re- this question requires an overview of the history gions of the Arabian Peninsula that belong to the of the Arabian trade in aromatics in general, and genera Boswellia and Commiphore of the Bursera- of frankincense in particular. I will begin by can- caea family, otherwise known as frankincense and vassing the proveniences of the cuboid incense myrrh. From the Hellenistic period onward, these burner, looking through space and time for its ap- resins and their lucrative westward trade became pearances in history, and then provide a historical the principal reference point for Arabia in the overview of the aromatics trade in the Near East Mediterranean world. Indeed, this was so much and a brief account of the production of incense the case that it is almost impossible for scholars burners today. Although incense burners have to approach the question of Arabian trade prior been found in archaeological excavations ranging to the Hellenistic period without presuming that geographically from the Levant to Mesopotamia, this trade involved principally the gum resin frank- my focus here is only on items found along the incense, the most famous fragrant substance trade routes running from the Arabian Peninsula throughout history. In this chapter, I summarize to the Mediterranean markets, on the one hand, the history of the frankincense trade through the and to Mesopotamian city-states, on the other. As lens of its principal container—the cuboid in- I will argue here, odors are a less analyzed but cru- cense burner—used from the late Third Millenni- cial part of the material culture of the Arabian um b.c. until the present day in the Arabian Penin- Peninsula. sula as the primary means to burn frankincense I will, therefore, begin with the question: How and other kinds of aromatics. can historians and archaeologists detect patterns The cuboid containers mentioned here are of olfaction use in history that are about burning square-shaped incense burners that have been re- combustible materials? Then, after reviewing both covered from archaeological excavations from ev- the material culture of cuboid incense burners in ery quadrant of the Middle East (figs. 1.1 and 1.2). particular archaeological contexts and the histori- They are testimony to a vast trade in Arabian aro- cal evidence for the aromatics trade, I will pose matics that extended beyond the Peninsula to the anew the broader question taken from Igor Kopyt- Mediterranean world, on the one hand, and to off’s seminal article on the biography of things and 1 Jan Retsö, “When Did Yemen Become Arabia Felix?” Pro- 2 Michael O’Dwyer Shea, “The Small Cuboid Incense Burn- ceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 33 (2003): 229. ers of the Ancient Near East,” Levant 15, no. 1 (1983): 92. © William Gerard Zimmerle, ���1 | doi 10.1163/97890044359�6_003 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. William Gerard Zimmerle - 9789004435926 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 03:31:20AM via free access 24 Halawa A = Second Millennium BC Emar = First Millennium BC Terracotta EUPHRATES RIVER Basalt Terracotta Softstone: Gypsum- Babylon Calcite Ashdod Nippur Jemmeh Uruk Softstone BABYLONIA Retabah NEGEV Ur Stone Downloaded fromBrill.com10/02/2021 03:31:20AM Terracotta & Stone Terracotta, Steatite Sandstone Tayma and William Gerard Zimmerle-9789004435926 Thaj Zimmerle Figure 1.1 Map of archeological sites excavated in the Near East where cuboid incense burners have been found. via free access Frankincense andItsArabianBurner BABYLONIA GAZA Uruk NEGEV Ur Failaka Island Tayma Qal‘at al-Bahrain Thaj Ed-dur Mleiha Ra’s al-Jinz II 2250 BC Burami Oasis/Al-Ain Salut = Late Third- Early Second Millennium BC Qaryat al-Faw DHOFAR Khor Ruri/ = Early First Millennium BC HADRAMAWT SMHRM = Late First Millennium BC [Neo- Najran Babylonian-Achaemenid Persian/ Hureidhah Shabwa Downloaded fromBrill.com10/02/2021 03:31:20AM Hellenistic] Marib Hajar bin William Gerard Zimmerle-9789004435926 = Frankincense Trees Timna Humeidh (Boswellia) SOCOTRA ISLAND Figure 1.2 Map of archeological sites excavated in the Arabian Peninsula where cuboid incense burners have been found. 25 via free access 26 Zimmerle their cultural legacy: “Where does the thing come objects in common use.”5 Second, describing the from and who made it?”3 artifacts as incense burners due to the interior res- idue, they reported that “[t]he burnt material formed a 3 mm thick crust, roughly oval in shape, 2 Raʾs al Jinz and Its Environment with edges fading to a light brown coloration. At closer examination, the rest of the containing The history of the four-legged cuboid incense space revealed remnants of previous firings and burner, sometimes identified as the frankincense tiny pockets of the same greasy deposit, suggesting burner, begins in the Arabian Peninsula. Excava- that the surface had been scraped before the last tions conducted at the coastal fishing town of Raʾs burning. The object was then classified as an ‘in- al Jinz in the Sultanate of Oman uncovered arti- cense burner,’ listed with number da 12728 in the facts that at first were unrecognized by the West- inventory of the Department of Antiquities of the ern archeologists excavating the site (fig. 1.3).4 Us- Sultanate of Oman.”6 Third, after interrogating ing their senses of sight and touch, the Omani their attributions, they re-emphasized the value of workmen perceived the attributes of these objects these objects in terms of their function, which based upon their size, stone quality, and represen- helped understand their original purpose in the tative signatures of burnt remains, identifying Arabian culture: “The close similarity in size and them as incense burners similar to the modern- shape of these Bronze Age burners with those tra- day Arabian-style burners that they knew. Arche- ditionally used for aromatics throughout Arabia ologists Serge Cleuziou and Maurizio Tosi wrote until today strongly suggests that they too were in about the attributes of these objects in their sum- similar widespread use for daily household and mary report on the excavations, noting three key ritual activities.”7 While the excavators were first points. First, when ascribing a domestic function unable to determine the type of objects that they to the object, they suggested that, “the sandstone had found, their Omani workers in the field recog- burner was by no means a precious or exceptional nized da 12728 as “the earliest mabkhara,” or in- object, but an item of standard household equip- cense burner, in archeological history, used to ment: the burning of aromatics was an every- burn lbn, the milky-white crystalized substance day activity performed with locally manufactured known as frankincense.8 5 Ibid., 54. The authors also wrote: “Fragments of two identi- 3 Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” in The cal vessels had already been recovered from RJ-2 in previ- Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ous seasons, but they had not yet been identified as burn- ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University ers, due to their fragmentary condition. The first one, of Press, 1986), 66. the same shape (da 10850), was found in the fill of pit 4 Serge Cleuziou and Maurizio Tosi, “Ra’s al-Jinz and the Pre- su.2500, disconnected by erosion from the main sequence, historic Coastal Cultures of the Ja’alan,” Journal of Oman while the second one is just a leg and part of a side (da Studies 11 (2000): 54. As Cleuziou and Tosi describe it, “the 11971) but comes from a safer context: su.3154 in Room iv Early Bronze Age settlement at RJ-2 was a seasonal settle- of Building vi.” ment of a fishing community occupied from fall to the 6 Ibid., 53–54. spring, when fishing was not limited by the monsoon. This 7 Ibid., 54. can be inferred from the microstratigraphic study of the 8 Ibid. For further discussion of the Semitic etymology of deposits inside the houses and from general consider- the root lbn, “white,” from the Phoenician language, as ations. Due to heavy southern monsoon winds, offshore well as a brief discussion of lbnt, “frankincense,” see He- fishing is impossible in summer at Ra’s al-Jinz … the fish- brew in Its West Semitic Setting: A Comparative Survey ing season ranging from October to March” (41). of Non- Masoretic Hebrew Dialects and Traditions. Part i: William Gerard Zimmerle - 9789004435926 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 03:31:20AM via free access Frankincense and Its Arabian Burner 27 By the late third millennium b.c., when the first in- cense burners started to be manufactured in Magan9 (modern-day Oman and the United Arab Emirates), organized trade with Mesopotamia had intensified. By 2300 b.c., Raʾs al-Jinz stood at the crossroads of an international system of complex exchanges between the Arabian Peninsula and the empires of Mesopotamia.10 The site was rich in Ha- rappan pottery sherds, which bears testimony to the long distance trade between Mesopotamia, the lands of ancient Magan, and the Indus Valley to the Figure 1.3 Cuboid incense burner DA12728, Raʾs al-Jinz, east.11 The incense burners that Cleuziou and Tosi Sultanate of Oman.