Polished piece of wood of thyine, Tetraclinis articulata, from the underground portion of the tree.
THE BIBLE PROVIDES INSIGHT INTO which objects were highly valued in those epochs. Most are well known—gold, silver, various gemstones. Among the least known today is thyine, Tetraclinis articulata, a plant found in only one verse: “She [Babylon] bought great quantities of gold, silver, jewels, and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk, and scarlet cloth; things made of fragrant thyine wood, ivory goods, and objects made of expensive wood; and bronze, iron, and marble” (Revelation 18:11–12, NLT).
These luxury goods, including thyine wood, were traded in Babylon, a city symbolic of materialism and hedonism. “Thyine” is the transliteration of the Greek thuinos and therefore the translation preferred over “citron wood” (NIV, NKJV), “perfumed wood” (NLT), or “scented wood” (RSV).
While currently unfamiliar, thyine wood was well known in the ancient Mediterranean world. It is one of the most beautiful woods in the world. People living in New Testament times would recognize thyine as a wood used to make furniture for the rich and powerful, consonant with its inclusion in a list of luxury items. As Pliny put it so clearly: “Few things that supply the apparatus of a more luxurious life rank with this tree” (Rackham 2000). Pliny probably had Tetraclinus articulata in mind when he wrote that the outstanding feature of the wood, derived as he rightly notes from the underground portion of the tree, had “wavy marks forming a vein or else little spirals”; and, “Some have wavy crinkled markings, which are more esteemed if they resemble the eyes in a peacock’s tail” (Rackham 2000, Kaiser 1997). In Homer’s Odyssey, the alluring Calypso burns thyine in her fireplace, which is referred to by Pliny in his review of the tree’s history. As they are today, beautiful tables were inlaid with thyine; Pliny recorded one that was sold at the price of a large estate.
Thyine tree in October, in a preserve near Tamara, Morocco. The persistent low branches suggest that this tree is part of a fire-maintained plant community.
Worker ready to cut thyine trunk, in Essaouira, Morocco, which is the center of the artisan industry for working this wood.
The thyine tree is a small gymnosperm native to North Africa. Theophrastus noted it growing in the district of Cyrene, modern-day Libya, where it was extirpated by overharvesting and urban sprawl (Hughes 1983). Today, the largest stands of T. articulata are found in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, with outlier populations in Algeria, Spain, and a small stand in Malta (Buhagiar et al. 2000). About 10 percent of present forest cover in Morocco is thyine, known in Moroccan Arabic as araar; most of this forest is on government land. The center of the araar industry is the city of Essaouira on the Atlantic Ocean, with the largest extant trees being in the vicinity of Agadir in southern Morocco.
Two types of wood are extracted from the tree. The choice wood is from the underground portion, where numerous buds create a bird’seye pattern. The aerial portion of the tree provides timber that is easy to work, strong, but unremarkable in color.
The tree can reach a height of 10 meters (30 feet), with a crown typical of many gymnosperms—conical when mature. Pollen cones and seed cones are produced on the same tree. An unusual feature of thyine culture is coppicing: the stems are cut and the trees resprout from the root.
Resin, known as sandarac, is extracted from the tree (Langenheim 2003). The resin is implied in the translation of thyine as “fragrant wood” in some Bible versions. Stems are incised, allowing the resin to exude and harden; it is then collected. This practice of cutting the trees to extract sandarac was outlawed in Morocco more than 50 years ago. Sandarac was used in preparing mummies (Colombini et al. 2000) and was widely traded in ancient times.