Burning fragrant substances such as sweet gums and spices is common to many religious traditions and cultures today.

However, in ancient times, their use was even more widespread.

The fragrance was thought to please the gods and drive off evil spirits and the smoke was believed to carry prayers to divine ears.

The earliest archaeological evidence for incense comes from ancient Egypt, where long-handled, spoon-shaped incense burners, dating back thousands of years have been discovered.

But despite its widespread use and mention in written records such as the Old Testament, archaeologists know remarkably little about the type of incense that was used in historical times.

Now scientists have a way telling its story.

A team of chemists and archaeologists carefully sieved ash from the remains of a cellar in a house built around 400 AD in Qasr Ibrim, Egypt.

They discovered pea-sized fragments of material which all looked alike.

However, in the first chemical analysis of its type, some fragments were identified as having come from pine trees and other fragments were of the fresh, aromatic gum resin called frankincense.

The Boswellia trees, as they are known and from which frankincense comes, don't actually grow in Egypt.

So frankincense was traded across the desert by camel from southern Arabia or more probably, northern Somalia.
 

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