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Ceylon Cinnamon, The Mysterious Island Spice
Sri Lanka’s most romantic export commodity is probably cinnamon – that is, “true” cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum), earlier known as Ceylon cinnamon, (Cinnamomum zeylanicum). Mentioned in the erotic Biblical Song of Solomon (it allegedly fragranced the garments of Abishag the Shunemmite), besides being touted as an arouser of amorous ardour, the enigma of its origins added to its mystique.
Some historians think that the Ancient Egyptians knew it; they may have used it to mummify corpses, from around 1300 BC, the time of the 19th Dynasty ‒ the line of which King Rameses II was the most famous member. Queen Hatshepsut sent an expedition to Punt, which returned with the marvels of that country:
“…all goodly fragrant woods of God’s-Land, heaps of myrrh resin, with fresh myrrh trees, with ebony and pure ivory, with green gold of Emu, with cinnamon wood, khesyt wood, with two kinds of incense, eye-cosmetics, with apes, monkeys, dogs, and with skins of the southern panther, with natives and their children.”
However, ti-sps, the ancient word thought to have stood for “cinnamon”, may, in fact, have been used for East African camphor; the constituents of the roots of both being similar.
Biblical Spice
The Bible appears to confirm that cinnamon was known among the people of the Middle East at that time. According to the book of Exodus, God instructed Moses to make an oil for anointing the priests:
“Take thou also unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much, even two hundred and fifty shekels, and of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels, And of cassia five hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary, and of oil olive an hin: And thou shalt make it an oil of holy ointment, an ointment compound after the art of the apothecary: it shall be an holy anointing oil.”
Cinnamon is also mentioned among the proverbs ascribed to Solomon. Moses was dated to around the same time as the 19th Dynasty, and Solomon to the 10th century BC. However, modern scholarship suggests that the books of the Bible were compiled much later than supposed, probably in the 8th-6th centuries BC. They may have been subject to editorial contamination during the exile of the Judaean elite in Babylon. So we cannot be sure whether the cinnamon trade existed before the 6th century.
secrets.
