the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Encyclopedias
Cinnamon
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or Cin´namon occurs in three places of Scripture; first, about 1600 years before the Christian era, in , where it is enumerated as one of the ingredients employed in the preparation of the holy anointing oil: 'Take thou also unto thee powerful spices, myrrh, and of sweet cinnamon (kinnamon besem) half as much (i.e. 250 shekels), together with sweet calamus and cassia.' It is next mentioned in , and again in; while in , among the merchandise of Babylon, we have 'cinnamon, and odors, and ointments, and frankincense.'
Many writers have doubted whether the kinnamom of the Hebrews is the same article that we now call cinnamon. Others have doubted whether our cinnamon was at all known to the ancients. But the same thing has been said of almost every other drug which is noticed by them. If we were to put faith in all these doubts, we should be left without any substances possessed of sufficiently remarkable properties to have been articles of ancient commerce.
Cinnamon of the best quality is imported in the present day from Ceylon, and also from the Malabar Coast, in consequence of the cinnamon plant having been introduced there from Ceylon. An inferior kind is also exported from the peninsula of India. From these countries the cinnamon and cassia of the ancients must most likely have been obtained, though both are also produced in the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, in China, and in Cochinchina. Cinnamon is imported in bales and chests—the bundles weighing about one pound each. The pieces consist of compound quills, are about three feet long, slender, and enclose within them several smaller quills. These are thin, smooth, of a brownish color, of a warm, sweetish, and agreeable taste, and fragrant odor; but several kinds are known in modern markets, as they were in ancient times.
In Ceylon cinnamon is carefully cultivated, the best cinnamon gardens being on the southwestern coast, where the soil is light and sandy, and the atmosphere moist from the prevalent southern winds. The plants begin to yield cinnamon when about six or seven years old, after which the shoots may be cut every three or four years. The best kinds of cinnamon are obtained from twigs and shoots; less than half, or more than two or three inches in diameter, are not peeled. 'The peeling is effected by making two opposite, or when the branch is thick, three or four longitudinal incisions, and then elevating the bark by introducing the peeling knife beneath it. In twenty-four hours the epidermis and greenish pulpy matter are carefully scraped off. In a few hours the smaller quills are introduced into the larger ones, and in this way congeries of quills are formed, often measuring forty inches in length. The bark is then dried in the sun, and afterwards made into bundles, with pieces of split bamboo twigs.' Besides cinnamon, an oil of cinnamon is obtained in Ceylon, by macerating the coarser pieces of the bark, after being reduced to a coarse powder, in sea-water, for two days, when both are submitted to distillation. A fatty substance is also obtained by bruising and boiling the riper fruit, when an oily body floats on the surface, which on cooling concretes into a dirty whitish, rather hard, fatty matter. Some camphor may be procured from the roots.
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