What are frankincense and myrrh? The mysteries of these botanicals go way beyond the Magi.

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From top to bottom: myrrh, gold, and frankincense.
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▼ The pharaoh Hatshepsut accomplished many feats in her reign over Egypt some 3,500 years ago. One of few women rulers then or now, she concentrated  power against incredible odds. She built temples and obelisks of unprecedented size, technical skill, and number. And, the story goes, her explorers, skilled in botanical espionage, secured the empire its first myrrh tree.
Myrrh and its cousin frankincense are known to Americans today, if at all, through the Biblical account of the wise men. In the Book of Matthew, it’s said that three Magi followed the Star of Bethlehem to the birth of Jesus, and gave to him three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But Douglas Daly, a curator at the New York Botanical Garden and an expert in the frankincense and myrrh family, says the substances have a rich history far outside the boundaries of a single Bible passage. And, despite millennia of use and study, they’re still yielding new insights to this day.
If you held the finished product in your hand, frankincense would look like golden raisins, or fossilized popcorn. It’s a small, dried, and slightly shiny yellow globule. “I liken it to grading diamonds,” Daly says. “It’s about color, it’s about clarity, it’s about shape.” Myrrh, meanwhile, is rougher, brown, perhaps more scatological, though fundamentally similar in size and sheen. But getting the botanicals to this stage takes a lot of work.

Liquid frankincense.
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Frankincense and myrrh are both resins extracted from trees in the Burseraceae family (▪ ▪ ▪)

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