Etrog, a Royal Assyrian Aromatic Purifier

This piece is based on my two forthcoming articles, Norma Franklin, “A Reassesment: Is the Cone-Shaped Object Held by the Genii in Aššurnaṣirpal II’s Palace at Kalḫu a Citron?” in Mortals, Deities and Divine Symbols. Rethinking Ancient Imagery from the Levant to Mesopotamia. Studies Offered to Tallay Ornan, Archaeopress, eds. Benjamin Sass and Laura Battini, Ancient Near Eastern Archaeological Series 13 (Oxford, forthcoming); eadem, “The Palm Frond and the Citron, the Lulav and the Etrog, and the Garden of Eden” In Conceptualizing Nature in Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Cultures: Case Studies, eds. Joel LeMon, Dalit Rom-Shiloni, and Izaak de Hulster, Dictionary of Nature Imagery and the Bible Supplement Series (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, forthcoming).

Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, Anchor Bible (Yale University Press, 1995), 370.

A תפוח אדמה “tappuach of the ground” means a potato, like the French Pomme de Terre.

Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs, trans. Frederick J. Gaiser, A Continental Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), 82; trans. from Das Hohelied, Züricher BibelKommentare (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1986).

See Ayelet Gilboa, Timothy A.J. Jull, Ilan Sharon, and Elisabetta Boaretto, “Notes on Iron IIA 14C Dates from Tell el-Qudeirat (Kadesh Barnea),” Tel Aviv 36 (2009): 82–94.

Azzan Yadin-Israel, Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple (Chicago University Press, 2022).

Even so, Yehudah Felix (1922–2005), expert in biblical ecology, defends the identification of tappuach with apples, since ancient apples, if small and unpalatable, smelled nice and the trees were large. Olam HaTanakh, חמש מגילות [The Five Scrolls], 64–66.

See, Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch, The Song of Songs: A New Translation (University of California Press, 1995), 55.

Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (Norton, 2019), 3.591. Marvin Pope (Song of Songs, 370) dismisses quince as not fitting and apricot as arriving too late in the region.

A modern, literal, word-for-word (formal equivalence) translation published by Covenant Press, the publishing arm of the Covenant Christian Coalition, an international, evangelical, post-denominational coalition of churches.

In Hindi, the fruit is called torange, from there comes the Persian turunj, and with the addition of a prosthetic aleph, the Aramaic אתרונגא etronga, Hebrew אתרוג etrog, and Arabic أترج utruj. See Dafna Langgut, “The Etrog: Celebrating Sukkot With a Persian Apple,” TheTorah (2021).

The citron tree lives for ca. 15 to 18 years. Flowers and fruit appear on the same branch as the tree bears fruit throughout the year.

Athalya Brenner, “Aromatics and Perfumes in the Song of Songs,” JSOT 25 (1983): 75–81.

Unfortunately, these now palatable apples were given the Latin name malus, which caused them to be incorrectly associated with the Latin word for wrongdoing, malum. Thus, the apple became associated with the “forbidden fruit” of the Tree of Knowledge despite the fact that there is no basis for such a link in the original Hebrew text. See Azzan Yadin-Israel, “How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple,” TheTorah (2022).

Philip S. Alexander, “Tradition and Originality in the Targum of the Song of Songs, in The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context," ed. M.J. McNamara, The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, (Sheffield Academic Press, 1994): 318-339; idem, The Targum of Canticles, Translated with a Critical Introduction, Apparatus, and Notes, A Michael Glazer Book (The Liturgical Press, 2002).

This is not actually true, but it is a standard midrashic motif. See, for instance, in the Talmud:

^{בלי סוכה לה. [הספריה הבריטית 400]} תנו רבנן פרי עץ הדר עץ שטעם עצו ופריו שוה ואיזה זה הוי אומ' זה אתרוג.

^{b. Sukkah 35a} It was taught: “The fruit of a majestic tree”—whose bark and fruit have the same taste, and which is that? It should be said that it is the citron.

For more on this midrash, see Rachel Adelman, “The Etrog: Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,” TheTorah (2023).

Eugenio Butelli, Concetta Licciardello, Chandrika Ramadugu, Marie Durand-Hulak, Alessandra Celant, Giuseppe Reforgiato Recupero, Yann Froelicheer, and Cathie Martin, “Noemi Controls Production of Flavonoid Pigments and Fruit Acidity and Illustrates the Domestication Routes of Modern Citrus Varieties,” Current Biology, 29 (2019): 158–164.

Book 3, 10.4 and 13.5

Dafna Langgut, Yuval Gadot, Naomi Porat, and Oded Lipschits, “Fossil pollen reveals the secrets of the Royal Persian Garden at Ramat Rahel, Jerusalem,” Palynology 37 (2013): 115–129.

Jambhala, the Buddhist god of fortune always holds a citron in his right hand.

HN, Book 12, ch.7 §15, “The citron tree, called the Assyrian, and by some the Median apple, is an antidote against poisons.” See also book 15, ch. 14, §47.

This building is also known as the Northwest Palace at Nimrud.

Norma Franklin, “The Assyrian Stylized Tree: A Date Palm Plantation and Aššurnaṣirpal II’s Stemma,” Ash-sharq 5 (2021): 77–96.

François Lenormant, The Beginnings of History According to the Bible and the Traditions of Oriental Peoples: From the Creation of Man to the Deluge (Scribner, 1882).

Emanuel Bonavia, The Flora of the Assyrian Monuments and Its Outcomes (Constable, 1894).

Texts, such as the Amarna Letters from Egypt, reveal the belief in the power of anointing the body, especially the head, with oil.

This is from the palace of the Assyrian city dating from the period of the great warrior-king Tukulti-Ninurta I (c. 1244–1208 B.C.E.). See Ioannis Fappas, “Exchange of ideas in the eastern Mediterranean during the 14th and 13th centuries BC: The case of perfumed oil use and ideology,” in Intercultural Contacts in the Ancient Mediterranean: Proceedings of the International Conference at the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo, 25th to 29th October 2008, ed. K. Duistermaat and I. Regulski with the collaboration of G. Jennes and L. Weiss Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 202 (Peeters, 2011), 495–510 [p. 497]. Purification with aromatic oil to purify is also described in the Maqlû ritual performed at Nineveh. In fact, anointing with oil was an important requisite for all life-changing events, such as a birth, marriage, parenthood, social advancement, and, ultimately, death. Any change was potentially “dangerous,” and protection was achieved by anointing with perfumed oil.

It was not only the king and palace elite who were anointed; palace rooms would also be purified and perfumed. Fappas, “Exchange of Ideas”; idem, “Precious gifts and the circulation of oils in the ancient eastern Mediterranean,” Talanta, 44 (2012): 157–182.

Two of the oil’s main constituents are limonene and citral. Limonene has been used to heal various skin disorders by destroying the growth of fungus; it is also antibacterial and can be used as a disinfectant. Citral is a volatile compound with a strong lemon odor; it possesses antimicrobial properties that are effective against seven easily spread airborne bacteria and is also effective as an insecticide. For the various pharmacological components and active ingredients of Citrus medica L., see Ajay Kumar Meena, Kandale Ajit, M. Mallikharjuna Rao, P. Panda, and Reddy Govind, “A review on citron pharmacognosy, phytochemistry and medicinal uses,” International Research Journal of Pharmacy 2 (2011):14–19; Kalpesh Panara, Krutika Joshi, and K. Nishteswar, “A review on phytochemical and pharmacological properties of Citrus Medica Linn,” International Journal of Pharmaceutical & Biological Archives 3 (2012): 1292–1297; and Navnidhi Chhikara, Ragni Kour, Sundeep Jaglan, Pawan Gupta, Yogesh Gat, and Anil Panghal, “Citrus medica: Nutritional, phytochemical composition and health benefits—A review,” Food and Function, The Royal Society of Chemistry 9 (2018): 1978–1992.

Beatriz Álvarez Arias and Luis Ramón-Laca, “Pharmacological properties of citrus and their ancient and medieval uses in the Mediterranean region,” Journal of Ethnopharmacology 97 (2005): 89–95; Antonio Imbesi and Anna De Pasquale, “Citrus species and their essential oils in traditional medicine,” in Citrus: The Genus Citrus, ed. Giovanni Dugo and Angelo Di Giacomo, Medicinal and Aromatic Plants—Industrial Profiles 26 (London: Taylor & Francis, 2002), 577–601.

Editor’s note: For more discussion of the motifs in the depiction of the seraphim, see Richard Lederman, “The Seraphim,” TheTorah (2019).

Many scholars once believed that these motifs were in a symbiotic relationship, and that the winged genii were actively tending to the tree. Indeed, some scholars explained the bucket that the winged genii held in their left hand contained water which was then sprinkled over the tree using the fir-cone. Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (“The Winged Figures of the Assyrian and Other Monuments,” Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 12 (1890): 383–393) suggested that the genii were artificially pollinating the stylized tree, which represented a date palm, and he identified the cone-shaped object as the pollen-laden spathe of a male date palm. But all this is based on a misconception; modern studies using various technologies have demonstrated that less than half of the stylized trees were flanked by the cone-holding genii.

Shawn Zelig Aster, “Images of the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Calah in the Throne-Room Vision of Isaiah 6,” in Marbeh Ḥokma: Studies in the Bible and the Ancient Near East in Loving Memory of Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, ed. Shamir Yona, Edward L. Greenstein, Mayer I. Gruber, Peter Machinist, and Shalom M. Paul (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015): 13–42 [p. 19]. See also, ibid, Reflections of Empire in Isaiah 1–39: Responses to Assyrian Ideology, Ancient Near East Monographs 19 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017): 64–65.

The combination of multiple images of cone-holding genii and stylized trees does not appear in any other Assyrian palace—it is unique to Aššurnaṣirpal’s palace.

See Shawn Zelig Aster, “Israelite and Judahite Ambassadors to Assyria,” ANE Today 7.12 (2019).

For a citron to be acceptable as an etrog at Sukkot it must be from a tree grown from a seed and not from a tree that had been grafted onto stock.