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Archaeological Frankincense
- Oliver R Dearlove (22 December 2008)
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Oliver R Dearlove, Consultant Anaesthetist Royal Manchester Children's Hospital
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Archeological frankincense The article’s reference to the Magi is most apt. New agers will wonder if the stuff they so expensively buy on the internet nowadays bears any relation except in price, to the ancient frankincense that was offered to little Baby Jesus, leaving aside any question of whether this is purely a story to illuminate the kingship of Christ and may not have occurred in any historical sense that we know. Having asked the question without even intimating which of the current nu-Labour apparatchiks could represent King Herod or the baby killers (1), the new age reader will be even more surprised to learn that ancient frankincense dating from AD 400-500 (by context, that is from the layer in which it was found) has been identified and analysed. The techniques used were gas chromatography and mass spectrometry and the results are to be found in Nature (2) Dec 1997, p667- 8, and were much the same as the datum modern samples that Evershed and his colleagues had been given. Mathe did the same kind of analysis on samples from Qana (3). COI ORD was a late medical officer at Qasr Ibrim. The Nature article was also referenced at: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/328/7445/930#57031 Oliver R Dearlove FRCA 1. Clearly an NT reference to the GMC’s highly successful policy to demedicalise child protection 2. Evershed RP, van Bergen PF et al Archeological Frankincense Nature 1997, 390, 667-8. doi:10.1038/37741 3. Mathe C Connan J et al Analysis for Frankincense in Archeological samples by gas chromatography mass spectrometry. Annali di Chimica 2007 vol 97 433-445. doi 10.1002/adic.200790029 Competing interests: as script |
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