Bdellium (Hebrew bedolach) was an aromatic gum like myrrh that was exuded from a tree. It has been identified with the species Commiphora wightii, now called guggul, although bdellium was also used for the African species C. africana and at least one other Indian species, C. stocksiana.^[1] Bdellium was an adulterant of the more costly myrrh (Commiphora myrrha); guggul is still used as a binder in perfumes.

The word occurs only twice in the Hebrew Bible. The first is in Genesis 2:12, where it is described as a product of the land of Havilah; the context has led some readers to link bedolach with pearls or other precious stones.^[2] Bdellium is mentioned once again, as something familiar, in Numbers 11:7, where manna is compared to it in color:

"Now the manna was like zera gad [coriander seed], and its appearance as the appearance of bedolach.

Bdellium appears in a number of ancient sources. In Akkadian, it was known as budulhu.^[3] Theophrastus is the first classical author to mention it, and Plautus the second in his play Curculio. Pliny the Elder describes it as a "tree black in colour, and the size of the olive; its leaf resembles that of the oak and its fruit the wild fig" (N.H. 12.19). It was an ingredient in the prescriptions of ancient physicians from Galen to Paul of Aegina, and in the Greater Kuphi.^[4]

Etymology

Middle English, from Latin, from Greek bdellion, variant of bdolkhon, of Semitic origin; akin to Akkadian budulhu.

Notes

1. J. Innes Miller, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 69ff. Miller refers to this species by its synonym, C. mukul.
2. The Idra Rabba (128b) describes the appearance of the dew descending from the Head of Arich Anpin as being "white like the color of the bedolach stone, in which all colors are seen". the Kabbalistic 138 Openings of Wisdom:Opening 89
3. Miller, Spice Trade, p. 69.
4. Miller, Spice Trade, p. 71.

Further reading

• Dalby, Andrew (2003), written at London/New York, Food in the ancient world from A to Z, Routledge, ISBN 0415232597, pp. 226-227.

External links

• Alchemy-works: Bdellium
• Bdellium

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Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Bdellium"