Ketoret — the Temple Incense

The ketoret was burned every morning and evening on the golden incense altar inside the Jerusalem Temple. The Talmud gives eleven ingredients — balsam, myrrh, cassia, spikenard, saffron, costus, aromatic bark, frankincense, stacte, galbanum, and salt of Sodom — alongside instructions for their proportions and preparation. A twelfth element, ma’aleh ashan (“smoke-raiser”), appears in some sources: the ingredient that made the smoke ascend in a perfectly straight vertical column rather than dispersing.

The identity of ma’aleh ashan was a secret held exclusively by the Avtinas family, who prepared the incense across generations. The Talmud records that the Sages pleaded with them to share it, fearing the knowledge would die with them. The family refused, saying they did not want it used for pagan incense; their reason was principle, not greed. When Greek scholars were sent to Alexandria to investigate the botanists and perfumers there, they found nothing comparable and returned empty-handed. The straight-rising column of smoke — something that awed witnesses for centuries — came from a single ingredient whose identity remains completely unknown.

The Temple was destroyed by Rome in 70 CE. Jerusalem was razed, its population killed or enslaved. The Avtinas family, like most of the Temple’s priestly and specialist families, perished. The ingredient list survived in the Talmud; the preparation knowledge did not. For two thousand years scholars, chemists, and botanists have tried to identify ma’aleh ashan. The candidates (Leptadenia pyrotechnica, some Ferula species, others) are guesses, none confirmed. The smoke still rises, if you imagine it. Whatever made it vertical is gone.