“Why Wasn’t This Perfume Sold for Three Hundred Denarii?” The Perfume of Mary Magdalene and the Chronicle of an Ancient Voyage in the Eastern Mediterranean

In two episodes—Mark (14: 3-5), Luke (7: 36-38), and John (12: 1-5)—Mary Magdalene anoints Jesus’ feet with perfumed oil and dries them with her hair. John reports both the quantity of perfume—a pound of very costly ointment made from pure nard—and its market value, 300 denarii. The data indicate an unusual possession, as both the quantity and the market value of the nard were very high for a house, albeit one belonging to wealthy people. Why did Mary have a pound of perfumed ointment of such high commercial value in her home? The first answer could be: the perfume was useful for her ancient “profession”, most likely practiced in the baths of Magadala, and she still had a supply of it. This answer, however, does not exclude another. The clues to this second answer—which is not an alternative to the first but in agreement with it—are given in The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me in which Maria Valtorta, an Italian mistic writer, narrates the journey, mostly by sea, of Peter and other apostles, from Ptolemais to Tyre, Seleucia Pieria and then to Antioch (Roman Syria), where Lazarus’ family owned a house, and finally to nearby Antigonia where they owned a large farm. In this farm, they cultivated a variety of flowers and aromatic plants on a large scale, most likely to sell them to the local perfume industry, well-established in the Antioch area, or to use them to make their own perfumes. This large-scale operation and/or close contact with those who produced the final product would explain why Mary owned such a “wholeseller’s amount” of very expensive perfume. The sea voyage from Ptolemais to Tyre and Seleucia Pieria, and the cart journey to Antioch and Antigonia, are described in great detail, although Maria Valtorta did not have any relevant cultural, historical and archaeological information. In conclusion, this study has investigated the biblical account of Mary Magdalene possessing a pound of expensive perfume. It has proposed an explanation derived from the mystical writings of Maria Valtorta: Mary’s family ran a large farm growing flowers and aromatic plants near Antioch, on a large scale. This hypothesis is supported by a strong correspondence between Valtorta’s detailed descriptions of an ancient sea voyage and modern archaeological and historical evidence of the ports and routes involved.