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About Spikenard

About Spikenard

by Shane Clayton

One of the most ancient of the aromatic botanicals, spikenard or nard was prized by the early Egyptian, Hebrew, and Hindu civilizations, having a long history of use in their religious practices as a valuable perfume, as traditional medicine, and as incense across a wide territory from India and into Europe. Also called nardin or muskroot, spikenard, Nardostachys jatamansi, is a flowering plant of the valerian family that grows in the Himalayas of Nepal, China, and India. Spikenard rhizomes (tuber-like underground stems) are ground and used primarily as incense and a dietary supplement, and their umbelliferous flower heads are crushed and distilled into the fragrant amber or green essential oil. Spikenard fragrance is valued as a calmative in aromatherapy and is perfect for meditation and contemplation.

Known by the ancient Greeks as nardos or nard, after the Sanskrit narada, it was also an important part of the three-thousand-year-old Ayurvedic healing traditions of herbalism and aromatherapy in India. Interestingly, Narada is also the name or title of a god-sage-shaman in the Hindu tradition, a famed traveling musician and storyteller who carried news and transmitted enlightening wisdom, not to mention journeying to cosmic realms.

Spikenard was obtained as a luxury in ancient Egypt from the Near East as early as circa 1480 BCE, the time of Queen Hatshepsut, who was said to have preferred the fragrance during her 18th Dynasty New Kingdom reign as Pharaoh. Considered sacred to her patron goddess Hathor, the perfume would have been revered in her temples due to its green color (wahdj) and earthy scent. My research indicates that spikenard is the primary ingredient called Merhet Nar “oil of nar” and Peret Senej “hairy seeds” in the ancient Egyptian Kepu temple incense recipes carved on ancient temple walls. You can see why in the photo below. (See also my article Kepu Temple Incense.)

Similarly, the Hebrew shebolet nard, or head of the nard bunch, was an important ingredient of their Ketoret - the consecrated incense described in the Hebrew Old Testament and Talmud. (See link to Why the Ketoret in the Temple.) The Ketoret was offered on a specialized incense altar when the Tabernacle was located in both the First and Second Jerusalem Temples and was an important component of the religious service in Jerusalem. Spikenard is also mentioned several times in the Tanakh (the Hebrew canon or bible) and as part of this incense referenced to hilchot shabbat in Tractate Shabbat (78b), as well as in Maimonides’ hilchot shabbat (18:16). It is also mentioned twice in the Song of Solomon (1:12 and 4:13); this and all of the preceding documenting the long-established Jewish use of spikenard for religious or spiritual purposes, just as did the Egyptians before them.

Spikenard also plays a prominent role in the famous scene in the New Testament Gospel of Mark where a woman named Mary anoints Jesus’s head with “nard, very precious”…“for the burying”. Mary was certainly aware of its religious significance and trained in its use for anointing, besides being able to afford it at 300 denares per pound - a year’s salary for most men in those times. Read all about this in The Woman with the Alabaster Box.

The Greek philosopher and physician Dioscorides, a contemporary of the author of Mark, writes that “nard” or spikenard oil was one of the coveted scents used in Egypt’s famous perfumed oils at the time. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History circa 77 CE, mentions spikenard as an important Egyptian perfume called Nardinom, as did Theophrastus (371-287 BCE), the Greek successor to Aristotle, in his “Enquiry Into Plants” some 300 years earlier. In Rome, it was the main ingredient of the perfume nardinum, handed down to them from the Greek and Egyptian recipes.

In “The Eighth Book of Moses” c. 350 CE, one of the Greek Magical Papyri (Papyri Graecae Magicae, abbreviated PGM), spikenard or “Indian Nard” is listed as one of the “seven sacred scents” used in a fascinating initiation ritual, and is attributed to the Greek goddess Aphrodite. It is generally recognized that Aphrodite is the Greek version of Hathor. These texts are mostly coincident with the Gnostic Gospels of Nag Hammadi and reveal a syncretic form of magic that proliferated in the early centuries CE that incorporates the mixture of Egyptian, Greek, Jewish, Hermetic, and Gnostic features so indicative of the melting pot of Alexandrian influence.

I was fortunate to have run across the work of magical symbolist Dr. Kirsten D. Dzwiza who kindly shared the graphic of her translation of this passage below. This is one of only three historical instances of “seven sacred/secret scents” I have yet to encounter, including the popular Hindu seven chakras perfume attributes and the Egyptian Seven Sacred Oils. I think they must somehow be related. In regards to spikenard, this papyrus shows an Egyptian/Greek/Jewish emphasis on spikenard being sacred to Aphrodite - representing the planet Venus in late antiquity.

We find many of these same seven ingredients repeated in the Hebrew Ketoret temple incense, as well as the Egyptian Kepu Temple Incense, and will see them again in the Jewish Tanakh holy oil and the Egyptian perfume recipes of Pliny the Elder and Dioscorides. (Note: Malabathron is a species of Cinnamomum - either malabatrum or tamala, if not cinnamon itself. According to Dioscorides (I - 63), Malabathron unguent from Egypt was based on beef fat and contained cinnamon; and like Spikenard unguent, one pound cost 300 denarii. Cinnamomum based Malabathron sounds distinctly reminiscent of the cinnamon-heavy temple Madjet unguent, which was considered part of the litany of the Egyptian Sacred oils.

In the later Hispanic iconographic tradition of the Catholic Church, spikenard represents Saint Joseph, husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Also, the Vatican tells us that the coat of arms of Pope Francis includes the spikenard plant attributed to Saint Joseph. Nard (Italian nardo) is also mentioned in the Inferno of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy:

“He tastes, but tears of frankincense alone;

And odorous amomum: swaths of nard,

And myrrh his funeral shroud.”

Dante suggests that the two fragrances sacred to the divine feminine, spikenard and myrrh, were traditionally used on the funeral shroud - and therefore perhaps mummy wrappings.

Meanwhile, Amomum sounds distinctly reminiscent of Cinnamomum or Malabathron in Madjet, the sacred temple anointing unguent. All four of these fragrant substances were integral not only to the ancient Egyptian funerary rites of mummification but also to the invocation of the Neteru divinities in the temple sanctuaries. Myrrh in particular was sacred to the preeminent Egyptian goddesses, especially Sekhmet, Hathor’s savage double. Frankincense was considered divine due to not only its gold color, but its medicinal and psychotropic properties and attributed to Ra and later Osiris. (See About Frankincense.)

Visit our ‘The Egyptian’ Sacred Scents Store, if you’d like to try a sampling of Spikenard or Merhet Nar, for yourself! Frankincense or Senetjer, Amomum or Madjet unguent, and Myrrh or Antiu are also available in limited quantities.

About Spikenard © 2018-2024 Shane Clayton - Wandering Stars Publishing

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Wandering Stars is dedicated to expounding the Sacred Science of Ancient Egypt

In memory and in honor of John Anthony West

Born July 9, 1932 - Wested February 6, 2018

AUM