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Beluchistan, Arabia, and East Africa; closely allied to myrrh and frankincense, and similarly employed from a very early date. Ac- cording to Pliny (XII, 19) the best sort came from Bactria, and the inferior from India and Arabia, Media and Babylonia. The gum, he says, “ought to be transparent and the color of wax, odoriferous, unctuous when subjected to friction, and bitter to the taste, though without the slightest acidity. When used for sacred purposes it is steeped in wine, upon which it emits a still more powerful odor.” The price in Rome he states as 3 denarii per pound, making it equal only to the poorest quality of myrrh.
Bdellium was particularly the product of the hills between the Hindu Kush and the Indian Ocean, and found its way westward through the Persian Gulf ports or overland through Babylonia. Arrian (. Anabasis , VI, 22) tells how the army of Alexander, returning through the country of the Oritae, came upon “many myrrh trees, larger than usual,” from which the Phoenician traders accompanying the army gathered the gum and carried it away. It is probably the bdolach of Genesis II, 12, which reached the Hebrews from the “land of Havilah,” the south shore of the Persian Gulf, the district of Ommana of § 36. Bdolach , however, is thought by some Hebrew authorities to be a crystalline gem; while the same word is used in the Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (Adler’s edition, p. 98) for the pearls of the Bahrein fisheries, and with the same meaning in the Meadows of Gold o-f Mas’udi (Sprenger’s translation, p. 544). See also Watt, op. cit., p.400; Lassen, op. cit., 1,290; Glaser, Skizze, 324-5, 364-7.
A passage in the Book of Numbers (XI, 7) is perhaps of interest as reflecting the ancient classification of fragrant gums by size and shape of the piece, rather than by distinguishing the tree. The manna of the Israelites is there said (in the R. V. ) to have been like coriander seed,” and the “ appearance thereof as the appearance of bdellium.’ ’ The A. V. has the “ color as the color of bdellium,” in contradiction to Exodus XVI, 31, where the color was said to be white; bdellium being brown, like myrrh. The marginal note in the Revised Version, “Hebrew, eye, ” points to the true meaning. Glaser has already shown the anti incense of the Egyptian Punt Reliefs to be an Arabian word, a-a-nete, “tree-eyes” ( Punt und die Siidarab- ischen Reiche, p. 7), and to refer to the large lumps, exuded through cracks in the bark, or through substantial incisions, as distinguished from the small round drops, which were supposed to be tree-tears (§ 29) or the the tree-blood (as shown under § 29). The Hebrews after the Exodus would have had the same classification; so we may conclude that the author of Numbers meant to compare the small
