Alabaster

Alabaster is a soft, fine-grained stone, often white and translucent and sometimes veined with bands of color. The alabaster of the ancient world was mostly a kind of calcite, quarried above all in Egypt. Easy to carve and polish, it was made into vases, bowls, statues and especially flasks for perfume and ointment; in Greek such a flask was itself called an alabastron. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder noted that ointments kept best in alabaster.

Mark tells that at Bethany, in the home of Simon the Leper, shortly before the Passover, a woman came with “an alabaster jar of expensive perfume, made of pure nard,” broke it open and poured it on Jesus’ head (Mark 14:3). Nard came from the fragrant roots of a plant of the high Himalayas and probably reached the Mediterranean from India. Some of those present said it could have been sold for over 300 denarii (Mark 14:5) — about a year’s wages for a laborer paid a denarius a day. Luke tells of an anointing by a woman in a Pharisee’s house, who brought an alabaster jar of perfume and anointed Jesus’ feet (Luke 7:37–38).