Original Egyptian Formulae Discovered and Recreated By Olfactory Scientists
In ancient times perfumes and incense were as beloved as they are today, but were also used extensively in pharaonic temple ritual. In his work ‘Isis and Osiris’ the historian Plutarch commented that the Egyptian priests burned incense three times a day: frankincense at dawn, myrrh at mid-day, and kyphi at dusk. He reported that the kyphi contained sixteen ingredients, which were compounded while the sacred Egyptian writings were being read aloud to the workers.
Instructions for the preparation of kyphi and lists of ingredients were found among the wall inscriptions at the temples of Edfu and Dendera in Upper Egypt. The Egyptian priest Manetho was known to have written a treatise called Preparation of Kyphi – Recipes, but no copy of this work survives. However, a recreation of the original fragrance, based on the Egyptian formulae found on the Temple walls at Edfu, has recently been made by olfactory scientists. All recipes for kyphi mention wine, honey and raisins with other ingredients including cinnamon, cassis bark, the aromatic rhizomes of cyperus, sweet flag, cedar, juniper berry, and resins and gums such as frankincense, myrrh, benzoin, labdanum and mastic. Kyphi has attracted extensive commercial, religious and academic interest, and all of those ingredients are still widely used in present day production of incense, perfumery or aromatherapy.
A diary entry from the renowned British explorer Howard Carter relates what he found during his Egyptian excavations: “The oils and unctuous materials were stored in thirty-four alabaster vessels and one of serpentine, which are remarkable for their diversified shapes and sizes. The ten alabaster jars of similar kind found lying on the floor in the antechamber, emptied and abandoned, in all probability came from this hoard in the annexe. With rare exception the lids and stoppers of all these vessels had been forcibly removed, thrown aside, and their contents poured out and stolen, leaving but a small amount of residue in each vessel. On the inner walls of some of the vessels that contained viscous substances, the finger marks of the predatory hand that scooped out the precious material are as clear today as when the theft was perpetrated”
A second robbery also took place after that, with the objective of obtaining the costly oils and unguents from the alabaster jars. The stone vessels were too heavy to carry away so the well-organised thieves arrived with receptacles like water skins. Every jar had been emptied, and on the interior surfaces of some of the vessels that contained viscous ointments, the fingermarks of the thieves are still visible today. In their hurry to escape with their load, the thieves dropped some of the incense and unguents, where they were found and catalogued by Howard Carter as ‘Four incense balls. These were about 2.2 in diameter. Probably made of a paste of gum resin. Burns freely with smoky flame and gives out pleasant aromatic odour. Yellowish in colour.’
Analysis of the materials from fragments of a broken ball were tested by experts who noted that the material was of a yellowish-brown colour, brittle, slightly resinous-looking, burned with a smoky flame and gave out a pleasant aromatic odour. It was a gum resin and from the colour it was probably not myrrh but more suggestive of frankincense.
Those exquisite 3000-year-old incense balls are now safe in the Egyptian museum in Cairo, but their formulae form the basis of a scent called ‘Ankh’ commercially available to the adventurous Egyptophile.