Incense in Judaism: the ketoret and its eleven spices

The ketoret was the compound incense burned twice daily on the golden altar of the Tabernacle and later the Jerusalem Temple, offered by the priesthood each morning and evening as prescribed in Exodus 30:34–36. Exodus itself names four ingredients — stacte, onycha, galbanum and frankincense, mixed in equal parts and salted — but the Mishnah and Talmud, chiefly tractate Keritot 6a, expand this to a list of eleven spices, adding myrrh, cassia, spikenard, saffron, costus, aromatic bark and cinnamon, along with three non-aromatic processing additives. The recipe was guarded by a single priestly family, the House of Avtinas, and its compounding was considered a specialized craft. The offering ended with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE; its ingredient list survives mainly through rabbinic literature and the Pitum HaKetoret, a prayer still recited daily in traditional Jewish liturgy.

The four spices of Exodus and the rabbinic expansion

The biblical text is spare. Exodus 30:34 instructs Moses to take stacte (nataf), onycha (shechelet), galbanum (chelbenah) and pure frankincense (levonah zakah), “part for part,” and to make of them a perfumed compound salted, pure and holy, to be beaten fine and placed before the Ark. This four-ingredient core is the subject of a companion article on the Temple incense of Exodus, which examines the identification debates around each term.

Rabbinic sources treat this verse as an outline rather than a complete formula. Keritot 6a lists eleven spices as the full recipe used in Second Temple practice, a number the Talmud connects homiletically to the eleven-ingredient count itself, independent of any pentateuchal instruction to add the extra seven. Maimonides, in his codification in the Mishneh Torah, follows the same eleven-spice list, giving quantities by weight for a year’s supply compounded once annually.

Identifying the eleven spices

Ancient spice names rarely map cleanly onto modern botanical species, and identifications rest on etymology, geography and later commentary rather than surviving samples. The table below gives the conventional Hebrew name, the standard English rendering and the most widely proposed modern identification.

Frankincense and myrrh are the two ingredients on which there is broad consensus, since both were major, well-documented items of the ancient incense trade moving north from the Israel and the Levant corridor and the wider Arabian trade routes. Onycha is the most contested identification: rabbinic sources describe a fragrant substance requiring purification, which some read as a mollusk operculum and others as a resin closer in character to labdanum or a styrax gum.

What does the ketoret smell like?

No sample survives, and no continuous production tradition preserved the exact proportions in practice, so any description is reconstruction rather than record. Working from the identified materials, the blend would have combined the sweet, slightly animalic warmth of frankincense and myrrh with the green, tenacious bitterness of galbanum, the honeyed hay-like note of spikenard, the leathery depth of costus root, and the spice-rack warmth of cassia and cinnamon bark. Saffron would have added a dry, hay-and-honey top note distinct from the resins beneath it.

The overall impression described in later sources — smoke that rose in a single straight column rather than dispersing, filling the sanctuary before drifting outward — points to a compound built for density and longevity in a large enclosed space, not for a light or fleeting scent. This is closer in character to the compound incenses catalogued elsewhere on this site, such as Egyptian kyphi, which similarly layered resins, roots and dried fruit pastes rather than relying on any single dominant note.

The three additives: salt, smoke-riser and Jordan lye

Beyond the eleven spices, Keritot 6a and later commentators describe three further substances mixed in during compounding, none of them aromatics in their own right. Melach Sedomit, “Sodom salt,” was added as a preservative and fixative. Ma’aleh ashan, literally “smoke-raiser,” was a plant substance credited with making the smoke column rise straight rather than spreading — its identity is unknown, and the Talmud records that compounders who withheld its use, and other required ingredients, were penalized. Kippat HaYarden, sometimes translated as “Jordan lye” or “Jordan amber,” was used specifically to treat the onycha before it was blended in, softening or refining a substance otherwise described as harsh.

These additives illustrate that the ketoret was understood as much as a technical craft as a religious formula: specific processing steps mattered as much as the raw ingredient list, and the Mishnah records penalties for compounders who altered the traditional method.

How was the ketoret prepared and burned?

Compounding took place once a year, according to Maimonides’ account, producing enough incense for daily use, with a larger reserve batch made for Yom Kippur. The spices were pulverized together, a labor described as requiring considerable skill to achieve a fine, even mixture. A half-maneh — roughly a few hundred grams by most reconstructions — was burned each morning and evening on the inner golden altar, with a double portion offered on Yom Kippur, when the high priest carried incense into the Holy of Holies itself.

Burning was direct, on hot coals taken from the outer altar, rather than through any of the indirect heating methods discussed in general guides to burning resin incense. The priestly method aimed for a fast, dense release of smoke suited to a single, timed offering rather than the slow, sustained burn associated with devotional or domestic incense use in other traditions.

Why did the Temple incense stop being made?

The ketoret required an altar, an active priesthood and, per rabbinic sources, a family with the transmitted expertise to compound it correctly. All three depended on the Temple’s existence. When Rome destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE, the physical offering ended immediately and permanently; there is no altar on which it could licitly be burned. Unlike other resins and spices in the list, whose trade and use continued elsewhere in incense, medicine and perfumery, the ketoret as a compound and as a rite went out of practice rather than evolving into a domestic tradition.

The ketoret in Jewish liturgy today

The eleven spices are preserved primarily through recitation. The Pitum HaKetoret, a passage built from the Talmudic list, is included in the daily prayer service in most traditional siddurim, recited both morning and afternoon, and forms part of Sabbath and holiday liturgy in various communities. Its recitation functions as remembrance and study of the Temple service rather than an attempt to reconstruct or burn the mixture, and it stands as one of the more detailed inventories of aromatic materials to survive from the ancient Near East, alongside the incense traditions of Egypt and the broader spice trade that connected the Levant to Arabia, India and beyond.

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• judaism
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• frankincense
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