ABSTRACT
In tracing eurasian trade it is often difficult to account for the different sources of goods. musk, however, if genuine, was exclusively an import into the near east as the musk deer which produced it lives only in the highlands of the eastern end of eurasia.5 The eponymous musk deer, Moschus moschiferus, native to northern china, mongolia and siberia is not the musk deer of the himalayas, which is Moschus chrysogaster.6 musk was completely unknown in classical antiquity in the near east and mediterranean; it first begins to appear there in late antiquity.7 The incorporation of musk into medicine, along with some other familiar asian substances like camphor and ambergris, occurred in early Islamic times.
