306 JOhN K. DAVIES
caravan of 200 camels from Taymā‘ and Saba (Yemen) itself was arrested by a
king of Suhu at Hindanu on the middle Euphrates for evasion of tolls.^43 Just
as the list of its merchandise – myrrh, wool, iron, alabaster, and dyed cloth –
vividly reveals how multi-purpose such caravans could be, so too the loca-
tion of the incident presupposes that the use of the Incense Road (or rather
roads) from Yemen northward was well established. By then, too, the Assyrian
conquest of Syria and the Levantine coast was well under way, and created a
system which prevailed with remarkable stability until Alexander and beyond.
In contrast to the reduction of Damascus and Tyre to the status of tributary
states, this system refrained from coercing the nomad Arabs into the provincial
structure, and instead provided ‘protection’^44 at the considerable cost of ‘gifts’
which are periodically recorded as being provided by Arab rulers (first queens,
then kings):^45 concomitantly, osteological evidence suggests a sharp increase
in camel use in the Jordan-Negev region during the pax Assyriaca of the late
eighth and seventh centuries BCE.^46 The only interruption to the system was
due to Nabonidus, whose extraordinary and much-debated ten-year residence
at Taymā‘ in the 550s and 540s^47 must have placed the inhabitants of the region
under direct regal control, no doubt for fiscal purposes, but Persian overlord-
ship restored nominal independence (footnotes 27–28), which Antigonus in
effect continued.
The comparative stability engendered by the establishment of this system had
three visible consequences. First, it provided the ruling power of Mesopotamia
(whether Assyrians, Babylonians, or Achaemenid Persians) with a lavish supply
of aromatics, such that Herodotus could report 1,000 talents of frankincense
being consumed annually at the great temple in Babylon (1.183.2). Secondly, it
did the same for the Jerusalem Temple reliably enough to permit the evolution
of stringent rules for the use of aromatics in the rituals.^48 Thirdly, it allowed
south Arabian aromatics to reach the Greek-language area. They had been
absent not only from the Mycenaean world^49 but also from the Homeric epics.
The epics (unlike the Hymns) make no reference to cassia, cinnamon, myrrh,
or frankincense, but do use compounds of θύος and θυόω, both for clothing^50
and especially for non-animal burnt offerings on altars,^51 to reflect the use of
fragrant substances in cultic and domestic contexts, so that the reappearance
of thumiateria and of their representations in Iron Age Greece and elsewhere
from the early seventh century BCE onward^52 need not imply access to south
Arabian products.
The first firm reflections of such access therefore remain Sappho’s allusions
to frankincense (fr. 2.4 L-P) and to myrrh, cassia, and frankincense (fr. 44.30
L-P), as offerings respectively to Aphrodite and to Apollo. If those citations
give us an approximate terminus post quem non of ca. 600 BCE, then the use
of such aromatics, possibly led by use in the cult of Aphrodite,^53 must have
started in or by the seventh century and spread rapidly in the sixth, prompting