Judean Balsam

The balsam orchards of the Dead Sea valley were the most prized agricultural property in the ancient world. The plant — almost certainly a Commiphora species found only in the Jordan Rift valley under very specific conditions — yielded a resin of such distinctive fragrance and supposed medical power that its juice sold at twice its weight in silver. Romans wrote about its scent as unlike anything else known. It was used in the Temple’s incense, in the anointing oil of the Jewish kings, and in the most expensive perfumes and medicines of the classical world. Cleopatra was said to have cultivated some of the trees in her own garden as a gift from Mark Antony.

When the Romans came, the plant became a prize of war. Pliny the Elder records that during the Jewish revolt, the Jewish fighters themselves cut down sections of the balsam groves rather than let Rome harvest them — and that Roman soldiers fought to protect the trees. Vespasian displayed the captured plants in his triumph through Rome. The Roman state then managed the groves as an imperial monopoly under guard. But the occupation changed the agricultural traditions, the Levant was repeatedly conquered and reconquered, and gradually the specific cultivation knowledge faded. By the Crusader period the orchards were gone. By the 13th century the plant was extinct in Judaea and the processing method had died with it.

In 2024 researchers at the Hebrew University successfully germinated seeds recovered from a medieval archaeological context — possibly the oldest viable botanical seeds ever grown — and raised a small tree. The tree’s DNA confirmed it as related to the balsam family. The tree has none of the aromatic compounds that made the original famous. The smell that Roman writers described as impossible to compare to anything else is still impossible to compare to anything — because it is still gone.