Review: Sacred Scents in Early Christianity and Islam, by Mary Thurlkill

Abstract

Mary Thurlkill, Sacred Scents in Early Christianity and Islam . Lanham/Boulder/New York/London: Lexington Books, 2016. Pp. xix + 191, ISBN: 9780739174524. $85.00. The historiography of late antiquity has awakened to the senses. Recent studies have elucidated the power of sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch for delineating religious experience and social boundaries throughout the late antique world. Susan Harvey's Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (University of California Press, 2006) deserves special note here, alongside studies by Beatrice Caseau, Georgia Frank, Deborah Green, Rachel Neis, and many others. Mary Thurlkill's intervention in this growing bibliography compares the role of “sacred scent” in the religions of late antiquity and the Islamic world. The book's scope is highly ambitious, ranging from the role of incense in Roman sacrifice to the spice-infused purity rituals prescribed by medieval Islamic jurists. As the author herself emphasizes, comparisons on this scale are challenging, perhaps inherently “messy” (163). Readers who seek a sharp, linear argument may find themselves frustrated by the book's sometimes-meandering style. Its comparative framework, however, yields some valuable insights. “Sensory Worlds,” the first of the book's three parts, considers the role of scent in defining domestic and civic spaces (ch. 1), culinary practices (ch. 2), and health and disease (ch. 3). Each chapter includes Roman, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic material that shows both the material underpinnings of the scent economy—especially Indian Ocean commerce in spices—and the various social settings where scents were deployed. In the Roman world, these settings included baths, banquets, theaters, funerals, temples, and even the Senate, though Cicero chastised Senators who dishonored their togas …