“Anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair”
Then Mary took about a pint of expensive perfume, made of pure nard, and she anointed Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. (John 12:1–8 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A lavish, slightly wasteful gesture; the disciples' objection seems reasonable.
The cultural key
The sealed alabaster flask held imported nard; Mark prices it at three hundred denarii: a year's wages, likely a family's stored treasure or dowry. Pouring it on the head is the gesture of anointing, how prophets made kings (Samuel over Saul and David), and 'Messiah' means precisely 'the anointed one.' Jesus adds the second meaning: bodies were anointed with perfumes for burial, and his burial will be too hurried for it (the women arrive Sunday with spices, too late). John names the woman (Mary of Bethany, sister of the just-raised Lazarus), moves the anointing from head to feet, wiped with her unbound hair: royal perfume applied at the servant's station, one chapter before Jesus washes feet himself. John also identifies the objector as Judas, prices the complaint (three hundred denarii), and unmasks the motive: 'he was a thief.' The fragrance filling the house answers the stench Martha feared at the tomb a chapter earlier.
Recovered meaning
One act carrying both truths at once: a coronation and an embalming. It is the only royal anointing Jesus receives, given by a woman the room scolded, days before a kingship enacted on a cross. 'She has done a beautiful thing.'