Iron Age

Long-distance trade intensified in the Iron Age, with trade developing between Southeast Asia and India, India with the West, and from the end of the period, China with other parts of Asia and the West.³⁰ Expansion of the Roman, Han and Parthian empires encouraged the new trade links and spices rapidly became available on scales never previously seen.

Black pepper, cinnamon, cardamom and spikenard were the most important new imports to Rome, while pepper, sesame, cumin, cinnamon and others reached China from the south and west. Table 3 overleaf shows the greatly increased variety of spices being traded. Figure 5 shows the main early spice trade routes.

Table 3 | Evidence for Iron Age Spice Trade

Evidence	Spice	Age	Comment	Reference
Appearance of sesame in Yemen	Sesame	First half of the first millennium BCE		Boivin & Fuller, 2009 (op. cit.)
C. cassia flower in sacred precinct of Hera at Samos	Cassia	Seventh century BCE	Evidence of Asian spice	D. Kučan, 1995³¹
Sappho Fragment 44 (The marriage of Hector and Andromache) refers to ‘mingled scents of myrrh, cinnamon and frankincense’	Myrrh, cinnamon, frankincense	Sixth to seventh centuries BCE	Greek mythologic poem. All these spices are exotic to Greece	www.allpoetry.com/poem/15809044³²
Various references in Hebrew Bible	Cinnamon, cassia	c. mid-first millennium BCE		A. Gilboa & D. Namdar³³
Chaldaeans burned 1,000 talent weight of frankincense per year on the great altar in a temple in Babylon. Incense burned by Babylonian couples after sexual relations	Frankincense	c. 430 BCE	Assumed traded from Arabia to Mesopotamia	Herodotus³⁴
Textual	Cassia, myrrh	c. 430 BCE	Used in embalming by Egyptians	Herodotus³⁵
Scythians filled body cavity with chopped cypress, frankincense, parsleyseed and aniseed during embalming	Frankincense	c. 430 BCE	Frankincense imported to Central Asia via proto-Silk Roads	Herodotus³⁶
Analysis of residues from Greek amphorae recovered from the sea showed presence of ginger and citrus families among other plants	Zingiberaceae, Rutaceae	Fifth to third centuries BCE	Gingers derived from Asia. Presence in amphorae demonstrates use in trade	B. P. Foley et al., 2011³⁷
Hippocrates’ documentation and use of multiple non-native spices as medicines	Amomum, cardamom, cassia, cinnamon, Ethiopian cumin, frankincense, galbanum, ginger grass, myrrh, pepper, saffron, styrax, spikenard, sweet flag	460–370 BCE	Substances would have been obtained by trade	Hippocratic Corpus³⁸
Theophrastus’ documentation of multiple non-native spices	Cassia, cardamom, cinnamon, frankincense, galingale, ginger grass, gum arabic, lime, lyceum, myrrh, pepper, pomegranate, saffron, sesame, spikenard, sweet flag, tamarind, tragacanth	370–285 BCE		Theophrastus³⁹
Mentioned by Charaka – early evidence of use in India and in Ramayana	Cloves	Second century BCE (Charaka)	Transported or traded as origin in Moluccas	W. Dymock et al., 1891;⁴⁰ R. S. Singh & A. N. Singh, 1983⁴¹
Textual evidence of cloves’ earliest use in China – officers of the court customarily held cloves in mouth before addressing the sovereign	Cloves	c. 266 BCE	Transported or traded as origin in Moluccas	W. Dymock et al., 1891 (op. cit.)
Single sesame seed found in site in southern Thailand	Sesame	200 BCE–20 CE	Possible trade with India	C. C. Costillo et al., 2016⁴²
Various occurrences of fenugreek seeds in Iron Age sites in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Germany	Fenugreek	Various Iron Age	Native to East Med. Unclear if traded	T. Popova, 2016⁴³

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Source: Anderson Ian. The History and Natural History of Spices: The 5000-Year Search for Flavour. The History Press,2023. — 328 p.. 2023

Iron Age

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