“When they saw the star, they rejoiced with great joy. And when they entered the house, they saw the Child with Mary, His Mother, and fell down and worshiped Him; and having opened their treasures, they brought Him gifts: gold, incense and myrrh."
Frankincense and myrrh - the resins, thanks to which the air is filled with aroma during the divine services even now, several millennia BC brought the inhabitants of Arabia such riches as oil to their present descendants.
Incense and incense were sold in huge quantities to all countries of the Ancient World. The Chaldean priests burned them generously on the altars of Baal, and in ancient Babylon they cleansed the skin with them instead of washing. Large storehouses were built for them in Jerusalem.
All over Greece, they were burned in honor of Zeus, and later fleets of cargo ships brought them to Rome. In Egypt, scented resins were used not only during religious ceremonies, but also for medicinal purposes and for embalming, as well as in a complex ritual that was supposed to provide an afterlife for the soul.
Smyrna, or myrrh, is the resin obtained from the myrrh tree. According to one version, the name comes from the Arabic "murr" - bitter, according to another - from the name of the daughter of the king of Cyprus Kenir - Mirra. This is what Ovid tells in "Metamorphoses" about her transformation into a tree.
A sinful passion took possession of Mirra's heart - she fell in love with her father without mind and memory. Unable to defeat love, Mirra tried to commit suicide, but the old nurse saved her from death. Guessing the true cause of the tragedy from some of Mirra's statements, the nurse, taking advantage of the absence of the queen (Mirra's mother), under cover of night brought the girl into her father's bedroom, without revealing to him whom she had brought.
Mirra spent several nights with her father as a lover. When, in the light of the moon, Kenir learned the truth, in anger and frenzy he almost killed his daughter with a sword. Mirra managed to escape, "the darkness of the hopeless night prevented the murder." She prays to the gods to make sure that she does not disgrace the living or the dead, and the gods fulfill her request. Shortly before the birth of the child, the beautiful Adonis, they turn Myrrh into a tree, and her bitter tears become his resin. “Those tears are her glory. The name of the lady keeps the name of the bark worn out myrrh, and centuries will not forget about her”…
Of all the rare trees growing on Socotra Island in the Arabian Sea, none have evoked such fabulous associations or played such an important role in the past as incense and myrrh. On the mountain slopes and especially in the valley leading to the town of Kulansiv, these trees grow in abundance. When they bloom, the fragrance fills the entire valley.
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The Egyptians in ancient times tried to bring myrrh and incense to Egypt in order to reduce the cost of incense.
They called the land of incense the country of Punt, and the first expedition went there in 3000 BC. All that is known about her is that she brought 80,000 measures of myrrh and 2,600 pieces of incense wood. In the following centuries, expeditions from time to time went to the Red Sea, and the last was in 1493 BC. sent by order of the great Egyptian queen Hatshepsut. The flotilla consisted of five large ships, each with thirty oarsmen. On the walls of the temple at Deir el Bahari, there are long inscriptions and drawings depicting her return.
Divine resin from South Arabia - frankincense in Ancient Rome was called "benzo", which meant "good, kind life." From Rome and Byzantium, "benzoy" penetrated all the countries of Europe, it also appeared in Russia. It was brought by the Arabs, so it became known under the Arabic name - incense. In the 16th century, the price of incense was almost equal to the price of amber - 12 rubles per pood and many times higher than the price of other oriental goods - almonds, dates, and pepper. Why was incense so valuable?
Even the priests of Egypt noticed that epidemics bypassed temples if incense was smoked in them. In 1770, when the plague was raging in Moscow, the Trinity-Sergius Monastery was "miraculously preserved" from it. "Here, in the monastery, open to all, the sick flocked - and there was not one who died of the infection, many were even healed from it."
There has long been a popular belief among the people: "You cannot get sick in the temple of God," and it had a very real foundation.
In 1608, needle-like crystals were obtained by dry distillation from incense, capable of sublimation (evaporating, bypassing the liquid state). The crystals were named benzoic acid. And, as it turned out later, benzoic acid is an excellent antiseptic. Nowadays, it is obtained not from frankincense, but in a much cheaper way - by oxidizing toluene and is widely used in the production of preservatives and antibiotics, medicines, dyes, in the perfume industry.
The smoke of incense not only cleans the air of bacteria. He has one property, perhaps even more important, which was undoubtedly known to the ancient priests. Prominent English ethnographer James George Fraser, author of the 12-volume work The Golden Bough, reported interesting information about incense.
The aborigines of the island of Java, who believed in the existence of good and evil spirits, believed that each spirit has its own interpreter, which is often a woman. This woman, in order to prepare herself to receive the messages of the spirit, sits down next to the censer, covers her head and in such an impromptu hut inhales incense smoke.
Gradually she falls into ecstasy, accompanied by high-pitched screams, terrible convulsions and spasms. This is a sign that a spirit has entered her, and when she calms down, her words are taken for the revelations of the oracle. It is assumed that her own soul is absent at this time, and the words come from the spirit that has taken over her.
American dentist Harry Wright, who observed the actions of healers in South America, Africa and Australia, in his book "Witness of Witchcraft" said that healers, in order to quickly achieve success, fumigate their patients with incense. According to his observations, incense smoke increases suggestibility.
