In 2013, residue of an oil from cinnamon was discovered in an ancient flask in Israel. The flask was 3,000 years old.
The trade in spices from the Far East to Egypt was known to be at least two thousand years old. But the discovery in Israel has extended the history of the spice trade by a millennia.
Cinnamon is obtained from the bark of various trees around Sri Lanka and India.
A distance of 3,000 miles separates Sri Lanka from Israel. From either point, the cinnamon trade reached beyond known worlds. Cinnamon changed hands at least 12 times, going by sea and land before it reached buyers in the West. In the first century, Roman author Pliny the Elder put the cost of a pound of cinnamon at equal to 50 months of labor.
