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This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 3 September 2022. Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus Cinnamomum. Cinnamon is the name for several species of trees and the commercial spice products that some of them produce. All are members of the genus Cinnamomum in the family Lauraceae. Only a few Cinnamomum species are grown commercially for spice. Latin and medieval French intermediate forms.
Cinnamon has been known from remote antiquity. It was imported to Egypt as early as 2000 BC, but those who reported that it had come from China had confused it with Cinnamomum cassia, a related species. Cinnamomum verum, which translates from Latin as “true cinnamon”, is native to India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar. In Ancient Egypt, cinnamon was used to embalm mummies. From the Ptolemaic Kingdom onward, Ancient Egyptian recipes for kyphi, an aromatic used for burning, included cinnamon and cassia.
Sappho in the 7th century BC. According to Herodotus, both cinnamon and cassia grew in Arabia, together with incense, myrrh and labdanum, and were guarded by winged serpents. Pliny the Elder wrote that cinnamon was brought around the Arabian peninsula on “rafts without rudders or sails or oars”, taking advantage of the winter trade winds. Cinnamon was too expensive to be commonly used on funeral pyres in Rome, but the Emperor Nero is said to have burned a year’s worth of the city’s supply at the funeral for his wife Poppaea Sabina in AD 65. Through the Middle Ages, the source of cinnamon remained a mystery to the Western world. From reading Latin writers who quoted Herodotus, Europeans had learned that cinnamon came up the Red Sea to the trading ports of Egypt, but where it came from was less than clear.
This was followed shortly thereafter by John of Montecorvino in a letter of about 1292. This cinnamon eventually competed with Sri Lankan cinnamon, which was controlled by the Portuguese. In 1638, Dutch traders established a trading post in Sri Lanka, took control of the manufactories by 1640, and expelled the remaining Portuguese by 1658. The shores of the island are full of it,” a Dutch captain reported, “and it is the best in all the Orient.