Etymology of cannabis - Wikipedia
The plant name cannabis is a Scythian word, which was loaned into Persian as kanab, then into Greek as κάνναβις (kánnabis) and subsequently into Latin as cannabis. The ancient Greeks learned of … Wikipedia
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Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Etymology_of_cannabis
Etymology of cannabis - Wikipedia
May 3, 2026 - The plant name cannabis is a Scythian ... cannabis by observing Scythian funerals, during which cannabis was consumed. In Neo-Assyrian Akkadian, cannabis was known as qunnabu (𒋆𒄣𒌦𒈾𒁍)....
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Cannabis Culture
cannabisculture.com › home › kaneh bosem 101: the botanical, linguistic, archaeological & contextual case for hebrew ‘kaneh’ as ‘cannabis’
Kaneh Bosem 101: The Botanical, Linguistic, Archaeological & Contextual Case For Hebrew 'Kaneh' as 'Cannabis' | Cannabis Culture
August 24, 2025 - From Hebrew KiNaMoN, it’s also believed to be a cognate of KaNeH, [kaneh/qaneh] since the aromatic bark is shaped like a reed (Green, 2019). This fits with Benet’s statement: “In many ancient languages, including Hebrew, the root ‘kan‘ ...
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Words possibly from Akkadian origin
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April 22, 2019
Qaneh-Bosm possible mistranslation?

First of all, Greek κάνναβις, κάνναβος has no etymological relationship with קנה־בשׂם. Second, there is no evidence of קנה־בשׂם was a fixed expression. It occurs only in a single context in Exodus 30:23 where בשם and בשמים "spices, fragrances" occur a number of times with other aromatic compounds (such as myrrh and cinnamon). There is a similar expression with a different adjective קנה הטוב in Jeremiah 6:20, where it refers to an aromatic compound (the adjective haṭṭob here is a cognate with Arabic ṭīb "fragrant smell" and ṭayyib "sweet, perfumed" and Akkadian ṭābu "sweet, sweetened" as in sweetened wine) used in the Temple incense, as it is compared to frankincense. So קנה may be modified by a number of different adjectives to distinguish the aromatic or sweet-tasting קנה from other kinds of קנה. The word קנה refers to stalky reeds and rushes (which are grasses or monocots), and otherwise has no connection with flowering eudicots like Cannabaceae. It thus has derivatives referring to products made from reeds (cf. Exodus 25:31, Isaiah 46:6, Ezekiel 40:3, 42:16). The word קנה is not a foreign loanword and goes back to Proto-Semitic with cognates in Ethiopic (such as qanōt "goad"). The normal reading of the text is that קנה־בשׂם is a kind of reed, distinguished from other kind of reeds by its sweet taste or aromatic odor.

Indeed there were ancient loanwords of Scythian kanap "cannabis" (the source of Greek κάνναβις, κάνναβος) in the Near East. These included Assyrian qunnapu, Aramaic qanpɑʾ, and Arabic qinnab. Notice that all of these include a bilabial plosive, which occur in all other loanwords in Greek, Albanian, Armenian, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, and Finno-Ugric. The expected Hebrew form of the loanword would be קנף, not קנה. Note also that all these other Semitic forms of the word lack a final sibilant which is found in Mishnaic קנבוס, which points to the Hebrew word being a recent loan from Greek and not related to the earlier borrowings of kanap into Semitic.

The fact remains that the LXX gives the oldest interpretation of the phrase קנה־בשׂם in Exodus 30:23 as καλάμου εὐώδους (fragrant calamus) and Josephus (Antiquities 3.197) similarly wrote that the priestly ointment was made from myrrh, iris, cinnamon, and calamus. I don't know how accurate this translation is, but it is in the right ballpark as calamus was a reedy and fragrant plant. It was also an ingredient to the Egyptian medicinal compound called kꜣp.t or κυ̑φι in Greek which was used either as a salve or burned as incense in temple worship. The recipes of kyphi in Galen, Plutarch, and Egyptian writings mention sweet flag or calamus as an ingredient, and Israelite preparations may have been influenced by Egyptian ones.

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September 26, 2022
Is there a documented relationship between the hindi word for happiness and cannabis, or is it simply a coincidence?
Probably not. According to everything I've ever heard and every cannabis expert I can find online (ranging from Leafly.com to Marijuana: A History by Martin Booth) marijuana "kush" got its name from the Hindu Kush mountains. It was imported to the US from Afghanistan and got its name from the region. The "Kush" in Hindu Kush is entirely unrelated to Hindi "kush" (ख़ुशी) [this may get confusing]. Where ख़ुशी means happiness, the name of the mountains comes from Persian "kushtan" (کشتن), which means "to kill." The Hindu Kush has been translated as the Hindu Slayer mountains, and supposedly takes its name from the number of Indian slaves who died in transit to Afghanistan and Iran. Kush in the Hindi language actually also comes from Persian. Happiness in Sanskrit (the parent language of modern Hindi) was "Sukha" (सुख), but Hindi ultimately borrowed Persian "xushi" (خوشی), which also means happiness. "Cannabis" itself is also an interesting word. It's incredibly ancient. Modern English ultimately gets it from ancient Greek, but linguists think it is much older. The word "hemp" is probably cognate through some sound changes in the Germanic languages in accordance with Grimm's Law (a linguistic principal). It seems to trace all the way back to the early proto-Indo-European root language. It's one of the words that helps support the hypothesis that Indo-European language originated in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe because cannabis (among many other shared Indo-European words) is native to that region. It may also trace to ancient Semitic languages, like Akkadian, which called hemp "qunnapu" (𒋆𒄣𒌦𒈾𒁍). Alternatively, the borrowing could have gone the other way. "Marijuana" is kind of a mystery word. It originated in Mexican Spanish, and linguists don't really know where it came from. It probably came from an indigenous American language, but which one is still debated. More on reddit.com
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December 3, 2020
Proto-Germanic *xanapiz "hemp" | WordReference Forums
According to hemp | Origin and meaning of hemp by Online Etymology Dictionary "it is a very early Germanic borrowing of the same Scythian word that became Greek kannabis" but as fdb mentioned in this thread: Semitic & Germanic similarities Greeks borrowed this word from their eastern neighbors... More on forum.wordreference.com
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February 4, 2018
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Cannabis Culture
cannabisculture.com › home › new archeological evidence of cannabis use in ancient civilizations
New Archeological Evidence of Cannabis Use in Ancient Civilizations | Cannabis Culture
May 6, 2018 - Ninurta, equated in Akkadian with ... Sim.Ishara’armoatic of the Goddess Ishtar,’ which is equated with the Akkadian qunnabu, ‘cannabis’, may indeed conjure up an aphrodisiac through the association with Ishara, goddess of love, and also ...
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Cannabis Culture
cannabisculture.com › home › the mother plant of the goddess – cannabis
The Mother Plant of the Goddess - Cannabis | Cannabis Culture
March 5, 2021 - She does not appear to be a native Mesopotamian deity, but was worshipped by many people throughout the ancient Near East, which has led to a confusing array of attributions – she is known as a great goddess to the Hurrians, the wife of Dagon among the West Semites, and to the Akkadians she was a goddess of love with close affinities to Istar, whose sacred plant cannabis (qunnabu) was known as the aromatic of Ishara…
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Tumblr
allmesopotamia.tumblr.com › post › 80663671454 › patternsofbehavior-the-word-cannabis-is-from
ALL MESOPOTAMIA — patternsofbehavior: The word cannabis is from...
March 25, 2014 - The word cannabis is from Greek ... Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian qunnabu were used to refer to the plant meaning “a way to produce smoke.”[6][7][8]...
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/etymology › words possibly from akkadian origin
r/etymology on Reddit: Words possibly from Akkadian origin
April 22, 2019 -

Here are some words which POSSIBLY could be derived from the very old Akkadian language. Paradise: Pardesu (garden, park) Hemp, Cannabis: qunnabu Sparrow: Sibaru Cotton: Qutnu Turn, return: Taru, Turru a Cane: Qanu Sesame: shamshamu The name Susana: shushanu (Lily) Rapid: Rapadu ( to run ) http://www.assyrianlanguages.org/akkadian/list.php

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Cannabis Culture
cannabisculture.com › home › is dan mcclellan wrong about ‘kaneh bosem’ and ‘christ’?
Is Dan McClellan Wrong About 'Kaneh Bosem' And 'Christ'? | Cannabis Culture
July 20, 2025 - From Hebrew KiNaMoN, it’s also believed to be a cognate of KaNeH, [kaneh/qaneh] since the aromatic bark is shaped like a reed (Green, 2019). This fits with Benet’s statement: “In many ancient languages, including Hebrew, the root ‘kan‘ ...
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/academicbiblical › qaneh-bosm possible mistranslation?
Qaneh-Bosm possible mistranslation? : r/AcademicBiblical
September 26, 2022 - Moreover Assyrians, like their Hebrew neighbors, imported and burned large amounts of cannabis in their temples. A 2002 edition of the Compte Rendu, Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, a journal from the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (RAI) is the annual Assyriological Conference, (Parpola & Whiting ed. 2002) in a paper on hashish and opium noted “Qunnabu or qunnubu has emerged as the best candidate for identifying cannabis”. The respected journal gives us some insights into the methods and extent of its use: “…. A Neo-Assyrian recipe for making perfume speaks of steeped cannabis; a smoking pool is mentioned immediately in front of it.
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Leafly
leafly.com › home › news › lifestyle › ancient cannabis queens: 5 legendary weed-loving women
Ancient cannabis queens: 5 legendary weed-loving women
July 28, 2020 - Also worshipped in ancient Egypt, ... herb called Sim.Ishara burned in her honour. Sim. Ishara translates as “aromatic of the Goddess Ishtar”, which Assyriologist Dr. Erica Reiner has stated is the same plant as the Akkadian ...
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/askhistorians › is there a documented relationship between the hindi word for happiness and cannabis, or is it simply a coincidence?
r/AskHistorians on Reddit: Is there a documented relationship between the hindi word for happiness and cannabis, or is it simply a coincidence?
December 3, 2020 -

So in Hindi, to be Kush means to be Happy. It is also the name of a mountain range.

In English, Kush is slang for Cannabis.

I’m wondering if the origins of these terms (the mountain range, the cannabis, and the mood) have some kind of relationship.

I’d tack on the possibility of it being where the phrase “Getting High” comes from since mountains have high altitudes, but that seems like a bit of an unnecessary stretch.

(To answer the question I’m sure you have for me, the answer is no, I’m sober.)

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Probably not. According to everything I've ever heard and every cannabis expert I can find online (ranging from Leafly.com to Marijuana: A History by Martin Booth) marijuana "kush" got its name from the Hindu Kush mountains. It was imported to the US from Afghanistan and got its name from the region. The "Kush" in Hindu Kush is entirely unrelated to Hindi "kush" (ख़ुशी) [this may get confusing]. Where ख़ुशी means happiness, the name of the mountains comes from Persian "kushtan" (کشتن), which means "to kill." The Hindu Kush has been translated as the Hindu Slayer mountains, and supposedly takes its name from the number of Indian slaves who died in transit to Afghanistan and Iran. Kush in the Hindi language actually also comes from Persian. Happiness in Sanskrit (the parent language of modern Hindi) was "Sukha" (सुख), but Hindi ultimately borrowed Persian "xushi" (خوشی), which also means happiness. "Cannabis" itself is also an interesting word. It's incredibly ancient. Modern English ultimately gets it from ancient Greek, but linguists think it is much older. The word "hemp" is probably cognate through some sound changes in the Germanic languages in accordance with Grimm's Law (a linguistic principal). It seems to trace all the way back to the early proto-Indo-European root language. It's one of the words that helps support the hypothesis that Indo-European language originated in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe because cannabis (among many other shared Indo-European words) is native to that region. It may also trace to ancient Semitic languages, like Akkadian, which called hemp "qunnapu" (𒋆𒄣𒌦𒈾𒁍). Alternatively, the borrowing could have gone the other way. "Marijuana" is kind of a mystery word. It originated in Mexican Spanish, and linguists don't really know where it came from. It probably came from an indigenous American language, but which one is still debated.
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WordReference
forum.wordreference.com › other language forums › etymology, history of languages, and linguistics (ehl)
Proto-Germanic *xanapiz "hemp" | WordReference Forums
February 4, 2018 - According to hemp | Origin and meaning of hemp by Online Etymology Dictionary "it is a very early Germanic borrowing of the same Scythian word that became Greek kannabis" but as fdb mentioned in this thread: Semitic & Germanic similarities Greeks borrowed this word from their eastern neighbors Arameans, and Aramaic qanpā is from Akkadian qunnabu, ultimately from Sumerian kunibu.
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Salvationanointed
salvationanointed.com › about-the-church › sula-benet-קְנֵה-בֹשֶׂם › cannabis-etymology
Cannabis (etymology) – Salvation Anointed®
Hebrew קַנַּבּוֹס (qannabbôs) < קְנֵה בֹּשֶׂם (qěnēh bośem) may derive from Sumerian kanubi, though the final -s does not seem to be present in Akkadian (Assyrian) or Sumerian forms. Leading authorities on the etymology of both the German and Russian languages list a Sumerian cognate (these are “Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache” Kluge 23rd edition by Elmar Seebold 1999 on page 354, and “Russisches etymologisches Wörterbuch.” Heidelberg: Winter by Max Vasmer 1950-1959 in three volumes, vol.
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Assyrianlanguages
assyrianlanguages.org › akkadian › dosearch.php
Search Entry
1) an aromatic : šim qunnabu : hemp , hashish ; 2) a woman's name ;
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Cannabis Culture
cannabisculture.com › home › cannabis the once and future tree of life
Cannabis the Once and Future Tree of Life | Cannabis Culture
May 20, 2018 - She goes on to note that the sacred tree of these earlier images, was adapted into later more refined Assyrian images of the Tree of life, and still retained their sacred association with cannabis. …[I]t seems unlikely that the sacred tree motif, a central feature in the state iconography of the Assyrian empire, represents the date palm, [a common hypothesis] a quintessentially southern species that does not grow north of Samarra. By the first millennium BCE, the goats, the hunters, and the worshippers, who had flanked the sacred tree and the Qunnabu, the probable Assyrian word for cannabis, is attested in texts of the first millennium BCE.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/askhistorians › is the assyrian sacred tree cannabis?
r/AskHistorians on Reddit: Is the Assyrian Sacred Tree cannabis?
April 30, 2012 -

I saw these wall panels at the British Natural History Museum and thought that the leaf pattern was remarkably similar to that of cannabis. What is the consensus?

Here's an artist's rendition to help. The Tree of Life shows the same pattern of thin splayed leaves.

edit: another pic here.

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I'm going to give the same answer as I did to people asking about Olmec statue heads looking like Africans; even considering the fact that Assyrian art tries to make people look like people, much of it is very stylised. This makes it very difficult to pick up on one artistic element and assume it's meant to be realistic. Let's assume that the judgement that these trees are the Tree of Life is correct for simplicity's sake (and they almost certainly are anyway). Why would the Tree of Life need to resemble a real plant? But ignoring that for a moment, actually looking at the plants and comparing them to the Tree of Life doesn't really reveal many similarities. This or this or this does not much look like this , except that there is something resembling a tier-like structure. Now having said all that, it is probably true that the Assyrians had access to cannabis and some of them used it; the drug is from a part of the world very close to Mesopotamia, and there is an Akkadian word for Cannabis; qunubu, which according to wikipedia translates as 'way to produce smoke' but that is only sourced from a single book; 'Cannabis and Culture' from 1976, I'd want more references than that to accept it as fact. But my point is that I'm not denying that the Assyrians were aware of cannabis or that they used it, simply that I don't really see much of a resemblence and you would need more than an artistic resemblence to make a decent go at proving a connection anyway.
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I'm not one hundred per cent sure if it's cannabis or not in those pictures, but I do know that many ancient cultures used psychoactive substances, like cannabis, in their rites, so it's quite possible. Source - I did a paper on these kinds of things last semester. I can find my sources again if anyone is further interested.
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Wiktionary
en.wiktionary.org › wiki › قنب
قنب - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Probably from an Aramaic term cognate to Classical Syriac ܩܘܽܢܒܳܐ (qunbā, “greater sail of a ship”) in a more general meaning of a “sleeve, covering sheath or membrane”, possibly related to the mentioned word for hemp, relating ...
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ResearchGate
researchgate.net › figure › Cannabis-in-various-ancient-languages_fig8_6126750
Cannabis in various ancient languages | Download Scientific Diagram
... Thompsons analysis [127], cannabis was known as azallû in Akkadian or Ancient Assryian, and A.ZAL.LA in Sumerian (Fig. 5), and was the 48th most commonly mentioned herb, with ca. 30 citations in the Kouyunjik tablets. Some of Thompsons thoughts concerning this identification of cannabis were summarized [130] (p.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/academicbiblical › sula benet and kaneh bosm
r/AcademicBiblical on Reddit: Sula Benet and Kaneh Bosm
January 9, 2024 -

Hello fellow academics, I have recently been seeing some interesting developments in the cannabis sector regarding the rendering of “kaneh bosm” in Hebrew text, but have trouble locating any other scholars in agreement on this matter. Does anyone know, have any experience, or resources on this subject and who today might be an authority on the matter of this? So far, everything I’m finding in biblical scholarship seems to prefer the “fragrant reed” translation of this, and next to nothing about it referring to cannabis.

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Benet's claim in part rests on a "false friends" phonetic resemblance between "kaneh bosm" and "cannabis" whereas Greek κάνναβις, κάνναβος has no etymological relationship with Hebrew קנה־בשׂם. There is also no evidence of קנה־בשׂם was a fixed expression. It occurs only in a single context in Exodus 30:23 where בשם and בשמים "spices, fragrances" occur a number of times with other aromatic compounds (such as myrrh and cinnamon). There is a similar expression with a different adjective קנה הטוב in Jeremiah 6:20, where it refers to an aromatic compound (the adjective haṭṭob here is a cognate with Arabic ṭīb "fragrant smell" and ṭayyib "sweet, perfumed" and Akkadian ṭābu "sweet, sweetened" as in sweetened wine) used in the Temple incense, as it is compared to frankincense. So נה may be modified by a number of different adjectives to distinguish the aromatic or sweet-tasting קנה from other kinds of קנה. The word קנה refers to stalky reeds and rushes (which are grasses or monocots), and otherwise has no connection with flowering eudicots like Cannabaceae. It thus has derivatives referring to products made from reeds (cf. Exodus 25:31, Isaiah 46:6, Ezekiel 40:3, 42:16). The normal reading of the text is that קנה־בשׂם is a kind of reed, distinguished from other kind of reeds by its sweet taste or aromatic odor. The word קנה is not a foreign loanword and goes back to Proto-Semitic with cognates in Ethiopic (such as qanōt "goad"). Nor was Scythian kanap a loan from Semitic as Benet suggested; the cannabis plant was first domesticated in central Asia and the term *k'an- was loaned into many different language families in unsuffixed and suffixed forms (e.g. Sanskrit śaṇa "hemp", *kan-dir in Turkic languages, and *kana-p in other Indo-European and Semitic languages); see Michael Witzel's "Early Loan Words in West Central Asia" in Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World (University of Hawaii, 2006). Specifically the eudicot stems of the cannabis plant are segmented with branching nodes (each with leaves and flowers); monocots are grasses and grass-like plants with single long leaves arising from non-branching nodes (hence the use of the reed as a building material or as a rod or staff). It is a quite different plant which also grows in marshy wetlands unlike cannabis. So references to קנה and its Akkadian cognate qanû often mentioned its aquatic environment (e.g. 1 Kings 14:15, Job 40:21, Isaiah 19:6, 35:7; for Assyrian examples, see pp. 86-87 in the Assyrian Dictionary, Vol. 13, such as references to harvesting reeds from canals or cutting reeds in the marsh), with most probably referring to Arundo donax (see HALOT 1113). Benet's claim would have it refer to plants with branching stalks that do not grow in marshy areas. The candidates for the biblical sweet or fragrant קנה mentioned by scholars are all monocots that grow in wetland environments. Significant evidence for the identity of the biblical plant can be found in Assyrian sources referring to qanû ṭābu "sweet reed" which is linguistically equivalent to קנה הטוב in Jeremiah 6:20. R. Campbell Thompson in A Dictionary of Assyrian Botany (British Academy, 1949) surveyed the medicinal uses of qanû ṭābu and concluded that it is probably to be identified with Acorus calamus (pp. 19-20). He also noted that Greek κάλαμος and Latin calamus referred to several different reedy grasses, which makes it tricky to identify the one known to authors such as Pliny the Elder (NH 25.100). Immanuel Löw in Die Flora der Juden (R. Löwit Verlag, 1926), on the other hand, believed that Cymbopogon martinii was a better candidate for the biblical קנה הטוב. This was also a reedy plant with a sweet fragrance. Michael Zohary's Plants of the Bible (Cambridge, 1983) states that "the Hebrew words kaneh hatov, knei-bosem and sometimes kaneh by itself are believed to designate herbaceous perennial aromatic grasses. It is hopeless to speculate about which of the three or four possible species was intended" (p. 196), though he considers Cymbopogon the likely genus. Indeed there were ancient loanwords of Scythian kanap "cannabis" (the source of Greek κάνναβις, κάνναβος) in the Near East. These included Assyrian qunnapu, Aramaic qanpɑʾ, and Arabic qinnab. Notice that all of these include a bilabial plosive, which occur in all other loanwords in Greek, Albanian, Armenian, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, and Finno-Ugric. The expected Hebrew form of the loanword would be קנף, not קנה. Note also that all these other Semitic forms of the word lack a final sibilant which is found in Mishnaic קנבוס, which points to the Hebrew word being a recent loan from Greek and not related to the earlier borrowings of kanap into Semitic. The fact remains that the LXX gives the oldest interpretation of the phrase קנה־בשׂם in Exodus 30:23 as καλάμου εὐώδους (fragrant calamus) and Josephus (AJ 3.197) similarly wrote that the priestly ointment was made from myrrh, iris, cinnamon, and calamus. I don't know how accurate this translation is, but it is in the right ballpark as calamus was a reedy and fragrant plant. It was also an ingredient to the Egyptian medicinal compound called kꜣp.t or κυ̑φι in Greek which was used either as a salve or burned as incense in temple worship. The recipes of kyphi in Galen, Plutarch, and Egyptian writings mention sweet flag or calamus as an ingredient, and Israelite preparations may have been influenced by Egyptian ones. Benet's article also has imo more bad scholarship, such as in this sentence: "Another piece of evidence regarding the use of word kaneh in the sense of hemp rather than reed [or calamus] is the religious requirement that the dead be buried in kaneh shirts. Centuries later linen was substituted for hemp (Klein 1908)". If you look up Siegfried Klein's Tod und Begräbnis in Palästina zur Zeit der Tannaiten (H. Itzkowski, 1908), you can see that Klein does not say anything about kaneh garments made from hemp. He also does not say that hemp garments were replaced by linen ones. He first says on p. 25 that because of the belief in the resurrection, Jews were buried with increasingly expensive and elaborate garments which was a practice that Gamaliel I decried. He decreed that a corpse should be dressed in a simple linen robe (כלי פשתן), which stopped this practice (p. 26). This was then adopted by the people who then began to make any garment into a burial robe, even garments of fur, mixed fabrics, or old Torah scrolls (pp. 26-27). It was in this context that Klein mentions hemp burial clothes in a footnote. He wrote: "Diese Form länsst sich den verschiedenen Arten der Totenkleidung, die der Talmud nennt, entnehmen. Diese sind: צדרא (besser als צרדא, wie ed. Wilna an den Stellen Moëd. k. 27b und Ketub. 8b hat. Aruch liest צדרא wahrscheinlich das pers. جبه‎ 'Umhang' ein Gewand aus grobem Gewebe von Hanf. Rashi erklärt es: בגד קנבוס (wohl κάνναβις). סדין (vgl. Jud. 14,12f.; Jes. 3,28; -- Tos. Succ. 1,8 (192,25); Tos. Ahil. 8,3 (605,25); Jer. Ketub. XII, 35a oben), ein besseres Linnenhemd, das sich in der Form wenig von der כתגת, einem einfachen Hemdrock mit kurzen Aermeln, unterschied (cf. Benzinger, Hebr. Arch. 8.101)" (p. 27). Here he says that among the varied fabrics used as burial clothes was the garment called צדרא in the Talmud, which comes from a root meaning "coarse". Another scholar named Aruch identified this garment with the Persian jobbe. He then notes that the medieval scholar Rashi said that this garment was a hemp garment (בגד קנבוס). Klein then notes that this Hebrew word קנבוס is probably from Greek κάνναβις. And from there he passes onto a different garment called סדין (another loanword from Greek) which is the linen σινδών of the NT. So Klein does not say anything about a kaneh hemp cloth. He uses the word קנבוס instead, which he says was probably from Greek. And Benet very sloppily alters the sense of what Klein wrote. Klein does not say that linen substituted for hemp. He says that the dead were first buried in very expensive garments, or multiple garments, and Gamaliel insisted that a single simple linen garment should do, and then in later centuries the pendulum swung in the other direction with the dead being buried in any cheap garment, including canvas cloaks. This is why one should not depend on tertiary or secondary sources, but rather look up sources to see which claims are supported.
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