Spikenard | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 25, 1868

Spikenard.

A HIGHLY perfumed ointment prepared from a plant in India growing in short spikes. It was highly prized by the ancients, and was a favorite perfume at their baths and banquets. Horace represents a small box of it as equivalent to a large vessel of wine, and as a handsome quota for a guest to contribute to an entertainment. It was kept closely sealed, sometimes in alabaster boxes; and to unseal and open it was called breaking the box, Mark xiv, 3. The evangelists speak of it as diffusing a rich perfume; and as “precious,” and “very costly,” a pound of it being worth more than three hundred denarii, or over forty dollars, John xii, 3–5.