Worth its weight in gold

Myrrh isn't only an expensive motif of mortality, a potent analgesic and an Ancient Egyptian mouthwash, it's also associated with untamed lust and sensuality, discovers Deborah Nicholls-Lee

- Deborah Nicholls-Lee

IMAGINE if, of the three gifts bestowed on baby Jesus, Mary had to choose only one. Should she pick a precious metal, some incense or a resin used to embalm the dead? I’d like to make the case for myrrh, arguably the most versatile and practical of the three and, in Biblical times, outpricing gold.

The myrrh referenced in the Nativity story is an aromatic sap tapped from small trees found in north-east Africa and the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Its name is derived from the Arabic word for ‘bitter’, a reference to its pungent flavour. By association with these regions, Balthazar, the magus bearing myrrh, is depicted by painters such as Rubens and Bosch as dark-skinned and wearing a bejewelled turban or feathered Fez.

Inside Balthazar’s ornate container was a substance that had already been used for more than 4,000 years. Its earthy, liquorice-like smell would also have been familiar to the Ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans, who burned myrrh as incense for ceremonies. As Martin Watt and Wanda Sellar note in Frankincense & Myrrh (1996): ‘It was thought that the smoke rising heavenwards from the sweet burning incense forged a symbolic link between the people and their gods.’ Traces of myrrh have been found in mummified corpses, where a myrrh-based embalming fluid served as a preservative and fumigator.