Anointing, the Magi, and the Tomb

In the Hebrew Bible myrrh is a principal ingredient of the sacred anointing oil compounded in Exodus 30 and a recurring note of luxury and love in the Song of Songs. In the Gospels it frames the life of Jesus at both ends: it is one of the three gifts of the Magi, traditionally read as pointing to his death because myrrh was a burial spice, and it returns at the end when Nicodemus brings a mixture of myrrh and aloes to prepare the body for the tomb. Greek myth gives the resin a darker origin in Ovid, where the girl Myrrha, punished for an incestuous love, is transformed into the weeping tree whose drops are her tears, the bitter resin as grief made fragrant.

Myrrh's bitter resin does have real antimicrobial and mild analgesic properties confirmed by modern pharmacological study, which is likely why it proved effective as an embalming agent and why myrrh-based compounds are still used today in some dental and mouth-care preparations for minor gum complaints, one of the more genuinely evidence-supported traditional uses recorded in this atlas rather than a purely symbolic one. Wine mixed with myrrh, offered to Jesus at the crucifixion in Mark's Gospel and traditionally understood as a crude analgesic, was refused by him according to the text, a detail read by commentators as a refusal to have his suffering dulled.