Continuity as the Point

The Coptic tradition holds that each new consecration of the myron carries the previous one forward, a portion of the old being added to the new, and traces the chain back to the spices brought for the burial of Christ. Whether or not the chain can be traced historically, the claim tells you what the object is for. This is a church that has defined itself for fifteen centuries by unbroken succession in a see, through Chalcedonian separation, Arab conquest, long periods as a minority and repeated episodes of pressure. An oil that is deliberately never allowed to start fresh is a claim about that continuity in a form a congregation can smell.

That is also why the consecration is a patriarchal reserve rather than a bishop's prerogative. A bishop consecrates an altar with myron; he does not make it. Every altar in the church therefore depends on Alexandria in a direct material sense. Comparable reasoning operates in the Byzantine churches, where the great chrism is likewise a patriarchal consecration, but the Coptic rite is distinctive in the length of its spice list, the detail preserved in the service books and the emphasis its own commentators place on the carrying forward of the old oil into the new.