Bdellium
Encyclopedia
Bdellium (Hebrew bedolach) is an aromatic gum like myrrh
Myrrh
Myrrh is the aromatic oleoresin of a number of small, thorny tree species of the genus Commiphora, which grow in dry, stony soil. An oleoresin is a natural blend of an essential oil and a resin. Myrrh resin is a natural gum....

 that is exuded from a tree. A medieval Arab writer first made the identification with gum guggul
Commiphora wightii
Commiphora wightii is a flowering plant in the family Burseraceae. The guggul plant may be found from northern Africa to central Asia, but is most common in northern India...

, the species Commiphora wightii
Commiphora wightii
Commiphora wightii is a flowering plant in the family Burseraceae. The guggul plant may be found from northern Africa to central Asia, but is most common in northern India...

, although "bdellium" has also been used to identify the African species C. africana and at least one other Indian species, C. stocksiana. Bdellium was an adulterant of the more costly myrrh (Commiphora myrrha)
Myrrh
Myrrh is the aromatic oleoresin of a number of small, thorny tree species of the genus Commiphora, which grow in dry, stony soil. An oleoresin is a natural blend of an essential oil and a resin. Myrrh resin is a natural gum....

; guggul is still used as a binder in perfumes.
The word bedolach occurs only twice in the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...

. The first is in Genesis 2:12, where it is described as a product of the land of Havilah
Havilah
Havilah is in several books of the Bible referring to both land and people.The story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2:11: "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads...

; the context has led some readers to link bedolach with pearls or other precious stones. Bdellium is mentioned once again, as something familiar, in Numbers 11:7, where manna
Manna
Manna or Manna wa Salwa , sometimes or archaically spelled mana, is the name of an edible substance that God provided for the Israelites during their travels in the desert according to the Bible.It was said to be sweet to the taste, like honey....

 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
Akkadian language
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...

, it was known as budulhu, in Sanskrit gulgulu. Theophrastus
Theophrastus
Theophrastus , a Greek native of Eresos in Lesbos, was the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He came to Athens at a young age, and initially studied in Plato's school. After Plato's death he attached himself to Aristotle. Aristotle bequeathed to Theophrastus his writings, and...

 is perhaps the first classical author to mention it, if the report that came back from his informant in Alexander's expedition refers to Commiphora wightii
Commiphora wightii
Commiphora wightii is a flowering plant in the family Burseraceae. The guggul plant may be found from northern Africa to central Asia, but is most common in northern India...

: "In the region called Aria there is a thorn tree which produces a tear of resin, resembling myrrh
Myrrh
Myrrh is the aromatic oleoresin of a number of small, thorny tree species of the genus Commiphora, which grow in dry, stony soil. An oleoresin is a natural blend of an essential oil and a resin. Myrrh resin is a natural gum....

 in appearance and odour. It liquifies when the sun shines upon it." Plautus
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...

 in his play Curculio refers to it. Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

 describes the best bdellium coming from Bactria
Bactria
Bactria and also appears in the Zend Avesta as Bukhdi. It is the ancient name of a historical region located between south of the Amu Darya and west of the Indus River...

 as a "tree black in colour, and the size of the olive
Olive
The olive , Olea europaea), is a species of a small tree in the family Oleaceae, native to the coastal areas of the eastern Mediterranean Basin as well as northern Iran at the south end of the Caspian Sea.Its fruit, also called the olive, is of major agricultural importance in the...

 tree; its leaf resembles that of the oak
Oak
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...

 and its fruit the wild fig
Ficus
Ficus is a genus of about 850 species of woody trees, shrubs, vines, epiphytes, and hemiepiphyte in the family Moraceae. Collectively known as fig trees or figs, they are native throughout the tropics with a few species extending into the semi-warm temperate zone. The Common Fig Ficus is a genus of...

", but his descriptions seem to cover a range of strongly perfumed resins. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea or Periplus of the Red Sea is a Greco-Roman periplus, written in Greek, describing navigation and trading opportunities from Roman Egyptian ports like Berenice along the coast of the Red Sea, and others along Northeast Africa and India...

, of the 2nd century CE, reports that bdella is exported from the port of Barbarice
Barbarikon
Barbarikon was the name of a sea port near the modern-day city of Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan, important in the Hellenistic era in Indian Ocean trade...

 at the mouth of the Indus.
In China, bdellium, known as an hsi hsiang or "Parthia
Parthia
Parthia is a region of north-eastern Iran, best known for having been the political and cultural base of the Arsacid dynasty, rulers of the Parthian Empire....

n aromatic", was among the varieties of incense that reached China either along the Silk Route from Central Asia, or by sea. Later an hsi hsiang was applied to an East Indian substitute, gum benzoin from Sumatra.

Bdellum was an ingredient in the prescriptions of ancient physicians from Galen
Galen
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus , better known as Galen of Pergamon , was a prominent Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher...

 to Paul of Aegina
Paul of Aegina
Paul of Aegina or Paulus Aegineta was a 7th-century Byzantine Greek physician best known for writing the medical encyclopedia Medical Compendium in Seven Books...

, and in the Greater Kuphi.

Etymology

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