Matthew 26:7

a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment "Then took Mary a pound of ointment, very costly" (John). "Ointment of spikenard, very precious" (Mark). The "alabaster box" was "a flask of fragrant oil;" the special kind of ointment named by the Evangelists nard or spikenard was extracted from the blossoms of the Indian and Arabian nard-grass (Becker's Gallus).

These alabastraor unguent-flasks were usually made of the Oriental or onyx alabaster, with long narrow necks, which let the oil escape drop by drop, and could easily be broken (Mark 14:3). But the shape and material varied. Herodotus (iii. 20) mentions an "alabastronof fragrant oil" the precise expression in the text sent among other royal gifts of gold and purple by Cambyses to the king of Æthiopia.

The costliness of Mary's offering may be judged from this. The other Evangelists name three hundred pence or denariias the price; (St Mark says, "more than three hundred pence"). Now a denarius was a day's wages for a labourer (see ch. Matthew 20:2); equivalent, therefore, to two shillings at least of English money; hence, relatively to English ideas, Mary's offering would amount to £30. It was probably the whole of her wealth.