Essential oils are some of the oldest and most powerful therapeutic agents known. Most people today are unaware that they have an impressive, multimillennium long history of use in healing and anointing throughout the ancient world. Dozens of essential oils are cited repeatedly in Judeo-Christian religious texts and records show they were used to treat virtually every eailment known to man at that time. Frankincense, myrrh, lotus, cedarwood, and sandalwood oils were widely used in ancient Egyptian purification and embalming rituals. Other oils, like cinnamon, clove and lemon, were highly valued as antiseptics hundreds of years before the development of today's synthetic medicines.