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The Uses and the Refining of Petroleum as Mentioned in the Talmud

Not much is known about the use of petroleum in ancient times, and there is practically nothing known about refining processes aside from some facts either indirectly deduced or else surmised from relatively later sources.' There is some importance therefore in the Talmudic sources, of the second and the fourth centuries A.D., where the matter is mentioned quite specifically. In the Land of Israel and in Babylonia (Iraq) of that period, we find that not only was petroleum well known, it was even sold in various ways as a common market item. Thus we find a second-century description of a person selling certain oils, including liquid petroleum.2 (This source even contains a remark about the bad smell of petroleum.) In Babylonia, a hundred years later, we find not only a mention about the sale of petroleum, but a whole description of how it is sold by peddlers going from house to house. These sellers of petroleum oil even had a special name: Naftoi.3 It is difficult, from these sources alone, to discern the uses to which the oil was put, but it can be gathered from the context that it was used either as an ointment or for some sort of medicinal purpose.4 Other sources, however,