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Never discount the power of self-delusion. Obviosly, they DON'T live in Numenor anymore, and can't. And that is why the urge to PRETEND they did would probably be so strong. I suppose I put that wrong; it isn't so much a desire of Gondorians to LIVE in Numenor as much as a desire to MAKE Gondor seem as much LIKE Numenor as they can. Make thier buildings look like the old ones and make their houses SMELL like the old ones. I didn't mean that actual Numenorians had any paricular love of perfumes (they may have, or they may not). I meant that, in Numenor, the air probably smelled perfumed NATURALLY (since they had a whole huge forest of fragrant trees). Having the air smell like that probably became part of what the men of Numenor considered to be PART of being a Numenorian. So when they settled in Gondor, which DIDN'T have those fragrant forests, there would probably be a great demand for items they could use to replicate the smell. Especially since I recall that most of those trees were originally gifts from the Elves of Aman, so the sweet smell was probably equated with them (and thier immortality). All I meant was that Gondorians probably liked things that smelled nice when burned, and since there are probably things like that growing in the jungles of the South, They would be another item that the men of Gondor might want enough to justify trying to conquer. In our world, wars and conquests have been waged over spices, why not in ME?
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