Antiquity — the perfume of the gods

The origins of perfume

The French word “parfum” comes from the Latin per (“through”) and fumare (“to smoke”), by way of Provençal and Italian: scented smoke. This etymology is no coincidence. Before being an accessory of seduction or luxury, perfume was an offering to the gods, a means of communication between men and the divine.

The first traces of the use of aromatic substances go back more than 4,000 years. Archaeologists have found traces of burnt resins and plants at many ancient sites, from the Mediterranean basin to Central America. These discoveries reveal a universal fact: very many civilisations sought to master the invisible through smell.

This practice rests on a deep intuition: smell is fleeting, immaterial, it seems to belong to another world than the visible one. Burning fragrant plants meant sending a message where hands cannot reach. The smoke rose towards the heavens, carrying prayers and intentions with it.

This symbolism is found in the world's great religions: incense in Buddhist and Catholic temples, myrrh in Hebrew texts, oud in Islamic ceremonies. The sacred dimension of perfume runs through the centuries and cultures without faltering.

Mesopotamia: the cradle of perfumery

It was in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, that the first documented traces of perfume production were born. Sumerian and Babylonian cuneiform tablets mention the use of aromatics in religious rituals, in pharmacopoeias and in royal protocols.

A woman named Tapputi-Belatekallim, a Babylonian chemist, is mentioned on a tablet dating from about 1200 BC. She is regarded by many historians as the first known perfumer in History. The tablet describes a preparation made from flowers, oil, calamus (an aromatic reed), cyperus, myrrh and balsam, added to water then heated and filtered several times.

The Babylonians mainly used resins (myrrh, frankincense), woods (cedar, juniper), and herbs (oregano, thyme) for their compositions. These substances were macerated in vegetable oils or mixed with wine. Most preparations rested on macerating the materials in oil, hot or cold, followed by successive filtrations.

The circulation of aromatics followed the great trade routes of Antiquity. Aromatics, like other precious goods (lapis lazuli came from Afghanistan), travelled over long distances: their trade was already an important economic sector.

The sacred resins of the Near East

Among the most important raw materials of Mesopotamian perfumery are liquidambar resin (styrax), labdanum (a gum-resin harvested from rock roses), galbanum and myrrh. Some of these resins were considered sacred and their use was strictly regulated by the priests.

Sumerian temples burned large quantities of incense morning and evening. These rituals were not mere traditions: they signified the presence of the gods in the world of men. Smell was the living proof of this invisible presence.

Ancient Egypt: perfume at the heart of civilisation

Few civilisations of Antiquity systematised the use of perfume as much as ancient Egypt. The Egyptians used aromatics in every aspect of their lives: religious rituals, funerary practices, medicine, cosmetics and the daily life of the elites.

For the Egyptians, the scented substance is first of all a religious language: the word for incense, senetjer, is linked to the verb “to make divine”. Burning a resin means making the god present — the pleasure of the smell comes afterwards.

The sacred role in the temples

Egyptian temples were veritable perfume factories. The walls of the temple of Edfu and of the temple of Philae still bear inscriptions detailing aromatic manufacturing formulas, with the dosages, the processes and the symbolic equivalents of each ingredient. Carved in the Ptolemaic period, these texts are among the most detailed perfume recipes that Antiquity has left us.

In the rituals, the statues of the gods were anointed with scented oils, incense was burned in their honour and the participants were anointed with scented substances. Frescoes show guests wearing cones that are generally interpreted as masses of scented fat, slowly melting in the heat of the body — a reading that Egyptologists still debate.

Kyphi: the legendary formula

Kyphi (in Greek kyphi, from the Egyptian kapet) is the most famous aromatic composition of ancient Egypt. It was a complex incense, used at once as an offering to the gods, as a medical remedy and as an ambience diffuser in the palaces.

Several Kyphi formulas have come down to us, notably thanks to Plutarch (1st–2nd century AD) and Dioscorides. The recipe reported by Plutarch has sixteen ingredients; versions vary according to the sources. They include notably myrrh, sweet flag, juniper, mastic, honey, raisins and wine.

Mummification and aromatics

The art of mummification is inseparable from the history of perfume. Egyptian embalmers used large quantities of resins (cedar resin, Judean bitumen), vegetable oils, natron and aromatic essential oils to prepare the bodies of the dead. These substances had a function that was both preservative and symbolic: they were to accompany the soul into the afterlife.

Chemical analyses carried out on mummy bandages have made it possible to identify these substances precisely: pistachio resin, coniferous resin, rapeseed, sesame or castor oil. These data confirm that the Egyptians mastered a genuine empirical aromatic chemistry.

Cleopatra and court perfumery

Cleopatra VII (69–30 BC) has gone down in history for her extravagant use of perfumes. Plutarch tells of her journey up the Cydnus to meet Mark Antony, on a ship from which perfumes escaped that scented the banks; Shakespeare would draw from it the image of sails “so perfumed that the winds were love-sick with them”. A treatise on cosmetics, the Kosmetikon, is attributed to her by ancient authors, without certainty.

Egypt produced and marketed its own perfumes, notably from lily, blue lotus, myrrh and rose. Alexandria, founded in 331 BC, quickly became the world centre of the aromatics trade, a crossroads between Africa, the East and the Mediterranean.

The Greeks and the Romans

The Greeks of Antiquity inherited Eastern practices and transformed them in their own way. They rationalised the use of aromatics, integrating them into their natural philosophy, their medicine and their social life.

The Greeks: between religion, medicine and pleasure

Theophrastus of Eresus (370–287 BC), a disciple of Aristotle, is the author of the first philosophical treatise on odours, Peri Osmôn (On Odours). In it he classifies perfumes by origin (flowers, roots, woods, resins), their effects on the body and their use in medicine. It is one of the first texts to treat perfume in a scientific way.

Hippocrates (460–370 BC), father of Western medicine, recommended aromatic fumigations to prevent epidemics. Tradition credits him with having had aromatic fires lit against the “plague” of Athens — a late anecdote, with no contemporary proof.

The Greeks used perfumes in the form of scented oils (myron), solid ointments and floral waters. The best-known production centres were the island of Rhodes (roses), Corinth (iris) and Athens. These perfumes were packaged in alabaster, faience or clay vases — the alabastra — and represented a flourishing trade.

The Romans: the inventors of olfactive luxury

If the Greeks rationalised perfume, the Romans democratised it and made it commonplace through excess. Imperial Rome was a deeply perfumed city. Statues of the gods were anointed with oil, the dead, the sheets, the food and of course the bodies were perfumed.

Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD), in his encyclopaedia Naturalis Historia, devotes several books to aromatics. He records precisely the prices, the geographical origins and the presumed virtues of dozens of substances. We learn for instance that Indian nard reached very high prices in Rome: Pliny cites up to a hundred denarii a pound.

The Emperor Nero (37–68 AD) is famous for the extravagance of his use of perfumes: at the funeral of his wife Poppaea, he is said to have burned the equivalent of an entire year's production of Arabian incense. Pliny laments that India, China and Arabia take a hundred million sesterces a year from the Empire for its luxuries, aromatics included.

The Romans considerably developed the aromatics trade. The Incense Route linked southern Arabia (present-day Yemen) to Mediterranean ports such as Gaza, over about two thousand kilometres. Caravans of camels carried myrrh, frankincense, cinnamon and pepper — products whose value was compared to that of gold.