From Foam to Sperm. Medieval Hypotheses on the Origins of Ambergris

The origin of ambergris has been debated for a long time, from the Middle Ages to modern times. The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of Arabic scholarship on knowledge about ambergris in the medieval West, particularly as transmitted by the medical literature produced in the Salerno school of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Persian and Arabic texts written from the ninth century CE included many hypotheses on the origin of this substance: it was seen as a bitumen, a plant, some kind of solidified sea foam or the excrement of a sea animal; in fact, in each of these cases, the actual process of its transformation was not fully understood (it was not before the eighteenth century). In the Latin world, these explanations were spread by various translations of medical literature, as ambergris was used in perfumes and in medication. Beginning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a new conjecture spread in Europe, without any reference to Arabic sources, describing ambergris as the sperm of the whale. Here we try to understand the origin of this legend, in relation to medieval knowledge on organic matters extracted from whales (spermaceti, oil), and possibly linked to other hypotheses mentioned by Arabic authors. - [Abstract]

Language: French

DOI: 10.4000/medievales.11290