Bdellium

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Bdellium (Hebrew bedolach) was an aromatic gum like myrrh that was exuded from a tree. It has been identified with the species now called guggul (Commiphora wrightii), although bdellium was also used for the African species C. africana and at least one other Indian species (C. stocksiana).^[1] Bdellium was an adulterant of the more costly myrrh; guggul is still used as a binder in perfumes.

The word occurs only twice in the Hebrew Bible. The first is Genesis 2:12, where it is described as a product of the land of Havilah; the context has led some readers to link bedolach with pearls or other precious stones. Bdellium is mentioned again, as something familiar, in Numbers 11:7, where manna is compared to it in colour.

Bdellium appears in a number of ancient sources. In Akkadian, it was known as budulhu.^[2] Theophrastus is the first classical author to mention it, and Plautus the second in his play Curculio. Pliny the Elder describes it as a "tree black in colour, and the size of the olive; its leaf resembles that of the oak and its fruit the wild fig" (N.H. 12.19). It was an ingredient in the prescriptions of ancient physicians from Galen to Paul of Aegina, and in the Greater Kuphi.^[3]

[edit] Notes

^ J. Innes Miller, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 69ff. Miller refers to this species by its synonym, C. mukul.
^ Miller, Spice Trade, p. 69.
^ Miller, Spice Trade, p. 71.