The following is probably an exhaustive list of the substances available for incense or perfume mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures:—Algum or almug wood (almug in 1 Kings x. 11, 12; algum in 2 Chrom ii. 8, and ix. 10, 11), generally identified with sandalwood {Sαηtαlwη album), a native of Malabar and Malaya; aloes, or lign aloes (Heb. ahâlim, ahâlôth), produced by Alοexylοn Agallochum, a native of Cochin-China, and Aquilaria Agallocha, a native of India beyond the Ganges (compare vol. i. p. 597); balm (Heb. tsori), the oleo-resin of Balsamodendron Opobalsamum and B. gileadense ; bdellium (Heb. bdôlah), the resin produced by Balsamodendron roxburghii, B. Mukul, and B. pubescens, all natives of Upper India (Lassen, however, identifies bdôlah with musk); calamus (Heb. kaneh; sweet calamus, keneh bosern, Ex. XXX. 23, Ezek. xxvii. 19; sweet cane, kaneh hattob, Jer. vi. 20, Isa. xliii. 24), identified by Royle with the Andropogon Calamus aromaticus or roosa grass of India; cassia (Heb. kicldah) the Cinnamomum Cassia of China (see vol. v. p. 184); cinnamon (Heb. kinnamon), the Cinnamomum zeylanicum of the Somali country, but cultivated largely in Ceylon, where also it runs wild, and in Java; costus (Heb. ketzioth), the root of the Aucklandia Costus, native of Cashmere; frankincense (Heb. lebôwzh), the gum-resin of Boswellia Frerea,na and B. Bhau·Dajiana of the Somali country, and of B. Carterii of the Somali country and the opposite coast of Arabia (compare vols, viii. p. 122, and ix. p. 709); galbanum (Heb. helbenah), yielded by Oρhoidia galbanifera of Khorassan, and Galbanum officinale of Syria; ladanum (Heb. lôt, translated “myrrh” in Gen. xxxvii. 25, xliii. 11), the resinous exudation of Cistus creticus, C. ladaniferus, and other species of “rock rose” or “rose of Sharon”; myrrh (Heb. môr), the gumresin of the Balsamodendron Myrrha of the Somali country and opposite shore of Arabia; onycha (Heb. sheheleth), the celebrated odoriferous shell of the ancients, the operculum or “nail” of a species of Strombus or “wing shell,” formerly well-known in Europe under the name of Blatta byzantina ; it is still imported into Bombay to burn with frankincense and other incense to bring out their odours more strongly; saffron (Heb. karkôm), the stigmata of Crocus sativus, a native originally of Cashmere; spikenard (Heb. nerd), the root of the Nardostachys Jatamansi of Nepal and Bhutan; stacte (Heb. nataf), generally referred to the Styrax officinale of the Levant, but Hanbury has shown that no stacte or storax is now derived from S. officinale, and that all that is found in modern commerce is the product of the Liquidambar orientale of Cyprus and Anatolia.

Besides these aromatic substances named in the Bible, the following must also be enumerated on account of their common use as incense in the East; benzoin or gum benjamin (see vol. iii. p. 581), first mentioned among Western writers by Ibn Batuta (1325-1349) under the name of lubân d: Javi {i.e., olibanum of Java), corrupted in the parlance of Europe into benjamin and benzoin; camphor, produced by Cinnamomum Camphora, the “camphor laurel” of China and Japan, and by Dryobalanops aromatica, a native of the I ndian Archipelago, and widely used as incense throughout the East, particularly in China (compare vol. iv. p. 761); elemi, the resin of an unknown tree of the Philippine Islands, the elemi of old writers (see vol. viii. p. 122) being the resin of Boswellia Frereana ’ j gum-dragon or dragon’s blood, obtained from Calamus Draco, one of the ratan palms of the Indian Archipelago, Zh∙αc6εnα Draco, a liliaceous plant of the Canary Islands, and Pterocarpus Draco, a leguminous tree of the island of Socotra (see vol. vii. p. 389); rose-malloes, a corruption of the Javanese rasamala, or liquid storax, the resinous exudation of Liquidambar Altingia, a native of the Indian Archipelago (an American Liquidambar also produces a rose-malloes-like exudation); star anise, the starlike fruit of the Illicium anisatum of Yunan and south-western China (compare vol. ii. p. 58), burnt as incense in the temples of Japan; sweet flag, the root of Acorus Calamus, the bach of the Hindus, much used for incense in India (see vol. ix. p. 280). An aromatic earth, found on the coast of Cutch, is used as incense in the temples of western India. The animal excreta, musk and civet, also enter into the composition of modern European pastils and clous fumants. Balsam of Tolu, produced by Myroxylon toluiferum, a native of Venezuela and New Granada; balsam of Peru, derived from Myroxylon Pereirae, a native of San Salvador in Central America; Mexican and Brazilian elemi, produced by various species of Icica or “incense trees,” and the liquid exudation of an American species of Liquidambar, are all used as incense in America. Hanbury quotes a faculty granted by Pope PiusV. (August 2, 1571) to the bishops of the West Indies permitting the substitution of balsam of Peru for the balsam of the East in the preparation of the chrism to be used by the Catholic Church in America. The Sangre del drago of the Mexicans is a resin resembling dragon’s blood obtained from a euphorbiaceous tree, Croton Draco.

Probably nowhere can the actual historical progress from the primitive use of animal sacrifices to the later refinement of burning incense be more clearly traced than in the pages of the Old Testament, where no mention of the latter solemnity occurs before the period of the Mosaic legislation; but in the monuments of ancient Egypt the authentic traces of the use of incense which still exist carry us back to a much earlier date. From Meroe to Memphis the eammonest 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 osselets 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. The tablet represents Thothmes before his guardian deity, the sun-god Ra, pouring 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 huphi, 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 χ 4, its sweet odour had a benign physiological effect on those who offered it. 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. 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 filled 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 Punt,” from its leaving to its returning to Thebes, still remains intact and undefaced.

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, collected and sent to Bombay the specimens from which Dr Birdwood prepared his descriptions of them for theLinnean 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 (OcZ. 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 hohl 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 communicating 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.

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 Jeremiah, and in Chronicles, it represents the Hebrew lebôndh, more usually rendered “frankincense”; elsewhere the original word is hetoreth (Ex. xxx. 8, 9, Lev. x. 1, Num. vii. 14, &c.), a derivative of the verb hitter (Pi.) or hihtir (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 satisfaction” 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 explicitly the burning of incense with only doubtful propriety. 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. 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), 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). It was then to be “put before the testimony” 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, and every evening when they were lighted or “set up” (Ex. XXX. 7, 8). A handful of it was also burnt once a year in the holy of holies by the high priest on a pan of burning coals taken from the altar of burnt-offering (Lev. xvi. 12, 13). Pure frankincense (lebonah) formed part of the meat offering (Lev. ii. 16, vi. 15), and was also presented along with the shew bread (Lev. xxiv. 7) every Sabbath day (probably on two golden saucers; see Jos., Ant., iii. 10, 7). The religious significance of the use of incense, or at least of its use in the holy of holies, is distinctly set forth in Lev. xvi. 12, 13.

The Jews were also in the habit of using odoriferous substances in connexion with the funeral obsequies of distinguished persons (see 2 Chron. xvi. 14, xxi. 19; Jer. xxxiv. 5). In Am. vi. 10 “he that burneth him’’probably means “he that burns perfumes in his honour.” References to the domestic use of incense occur in Cant. iii. 6, Prov. xxvii. 9, cf. vii. 17.

The “marbles” of Nineveh furnish frequent examples of the offering of incense to the sun-god and his consort (2 Kings xxiii. 5). The kings of Assyria united in themselves the royal and priestly offices, and on the monuments they erected they are generally represented as offering incense and pouring out wine to the tree of life. They probably carried the incense in the sacred bag which is so frequently seen in their hands and in those also of the common priests. According to Herodotus (i. 183), frankincense to the amount of 1000 talents’ weight was offered every year, during the feast of Bel, on the great altar at his temple in Babylon.

The monuments of Persepolis and the coins of the Sassanians show that the religious use of incense was as common in ancient Persia as in Babylonia and Assyria. Five times a day the priests of the Persians (Zoroastrians) burnt incense on their sacred fire altars. In the Avesta ( Vendidad, Fargard xix. 24, 40), the incense they used is named υohu gaonο. It has been identified with benzoin, but was probably frankincense. Herodotus (iii. 97) states that the Arabs brought every year to Darius as tribute 1000 talents of frankincense. The Parsees still preserve in western India the pure tradition of the ritual of incense as followed by their race from probably the most ancient times.

The Ramayaηa and Mahabharata afford evidence of the employment of incense by the Hindus, in the worship of the gods and the burning of the dead, from the remotest antiquity. Its use was obviously continued by the Buddhists during the prevalence of their religion in India, for it is still used by them in Nepal, Tibet, Ceylon, Burmah, China, and Japan. These countries all received Buddhism from India, and a large proportion of the porcelain and earthenware articles imported from China and Japan into Europe consists of innumerable forms of censers. The Jains all over India burn sticks of incense before their Jina. The commonest incense in ancient India was probably frankincense. The Indian frankincense tree, Boswellia thurifera, Colebrooke (which certainly includes B. glabra, Roxburgh), is a doubtful native of India. It is found chiefly where the Buddhist religion prevailed in ancient times, in Bihar and along the foot of the Himalayas and in western India, where it particularly flourishes in the neighbourhood of the caves of Ajanta. It is quite possible therefore that, in the course of their widely extended commerce during the one thousand years of their ascendency, the Buddhists imported the true frankincense trees from Africaand Arabia into India, and thatthe accepted Indian species are merely varieties of them. Now, however, the incense in commonest use in India is benzoin. But the consumption of all manner of odoriferous resins, gum resins, roots, woods, dried leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds in India, in social as well as religious observances, is enormous. The grateful perfumed powder abir or randa is composed either of rice, flour, mango bark or deodar wood, camphor, and aniseed, or of sandalwood or wood aloes, zerumbet, zedoary, rose flowers, camphor, and civet. The incense sticks and pastils known all over India under the names of ud-buti (“benzoin-light”) or aggar-ki-buti (“wood aloes light ”) are composed of benzoin, wood aloes, sandalwood, rock lichen, patchouli, rose·malloes, Flacourtia leaf (tajisput-tree), mastic, and sugar candy or gum. The abir and aggir butis madeat the Mahometan city of Bijarpur in the Mahratta country are celebrated all over western India. The Indian Mussulmans indeed were rapidly degenerating into a mere sect of Hindus before the Wahabi revival, and the more recent political propaganda in support of the false caliphate of the sultans of Turkey; and we therefore find the religious use of incense among them more general than among the Mahometans of any other country. They use it at the ceremonies of circumcision, bismil·lah (teaching the child “the name of God ”), virginity, and marriage. At marriage they burn benzoin with nim seeds to keep off evil spirits, and prepare the bridecakes by putting a quantity of benzoin between layers of wheaten dough, closed all round, and frying them in clarified butter. For days the bride is fed on little else. In their funeral ceremonies, the moment the spirit has fled incense is burnt before the corpse until it is carried out to be buried. The begging fakirs also go about with a lighted stick of incense in one hand, and holding out with the other an incense-holder (literally, “incense chariot”), into which the coins of the pious are thrown. Large “incense trees” resembling our Christmas trees, formed of incense-sticks and pastils and osselets, and alight all over, are borne by the Shiah Mussulmans in the annual procession of the Mohurrum, in commemoration of the martyrdom of the sons of Ali. The worship of the tulsi plant, or holy basil, by the Hindus is popularly explained by its consecration to Vishnu and Krishna. It grows on the four-horned altar before the house, or in a pot placed in one of the front windows, and is worshipped every morning by all the female members of every Hindu household. It is possible that its adoration has survived from the times when the Hindus buried their dead in their houses, beneath the family hearth. When they came into a hot climate the fire of the sacrifices and domestic cookery was removed out of the house; but the dead were probably still for a while buried in or near it, and the tulsi was planted over their graves, at once for the salubrious fragrance it diffuses and to represent the burning of incense on the altar of the family lar.

As to the θveα mentioned in Homer (II. ix. 499, and elsewhere) and in Hesiod (Works and Days, 338), there is some uncertainty whether they were incense offerings at all, and if so, whether they were ever offered alone, and not always in conjunction with...