Scents in Color, an exhibition, will debut in The Hague's Mauritshuis in the fall of 2021. A scent dispenser was installed next to a picture from the 17th century so that visitors may smell the subject of the painting. The outcome was unexpected, if not unpleasant. Myrrh and fresh linen hints were drowned out by the stink of Amsterdam's canals, something we don't typically associate with upper class life in the Dutch Republic but which would have been inevitable for even its wealthiest people.
Cleopatra by Margaret Foley, 1876 / Smithsonian Museum
Smell is a significant but frequently ignored part of history that is difficult to represent in writing or art. Science has made it possible for historians to replicate both unpleasant and enticing smells, from the manure-covered streets of Europe's biggest cities to the ashes of Roman funeral pyres. The perfume worn by the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII, who was as infamous for her power as she was for her beauty, is one of the few scents from antiquity that has surprisingly shown to be as seductive.
Essence of Cleopatra
Egypt has a long history of creating incense and perfumes, which it sold throughout the ancient world during the reign of Cleopatra. The first recorded recipe for a scent called kyphi in Greece dates to the time when the first pyramids were being built. Kyphi was created using animal fat and vegetable oil, as opposed to current fragrances, which are based on alcohol. Together with resins, roots, and berries, these were burned to produce a smoke that the Egyptians used to fragrance both their dwellings and their clothing.
The distinctive scent that Cleopatra is said to have worn originated in Mendes, a thriving community in the Nile Delta that was crucial to the commerce of spices from India, Africa, and Arabia. According to archaeologists who tried to piece together its long-lost recipe from various historical writings, Mendesian perfume was regarded as the best of its kind by both the Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder and the Greek physician Dioscorides. It was a classical version of "Chanel No. 5."
Archaeologists have to rely on Greco-Roman tales to fill in the blanks since there are no extant Egyptian texts that provide a complete formula for Mendesian perfume. Four key ingredients are shared by all of these accounts. In addition to resin and myrrh, the scent also included cassia, a less potent variety of cinnamon plant, and balanos oil, a semi-drying oil made from the seeds of a tree native to northern Africa and the Middle East called Balanites aegyptiaca (Egyptian basalm).
The town of Mendes today. (Credit: Roland Unger / Wikipedia)
The overlap, however, stops here. While some sources don't even mention cinnamon, others advise adding pure cinnamon to the mixture. One of the most thorough and extensive lists of substances comes from the Byzantine physician Paul of Aegina and contains terebinth, a tree from the cashew family that was once employed as a source of turpentine. While other authors claim the recipe asks for a total of 10 pounds of terebinth, Paul simply recommends one pound. Balano's are comparable.
The sources dispute not just about the ingredients, but also about how they should be prepared. Before the other ingredients may be added, the oil basis for the perfume must be boiled for 10 days and nights, according to the Greek philosopher and Aristotelian pupil Theophrastus. Paul, on the other hand, advises keeping the perfume on low heat for at least 60 days rather than boiling it. Additionally, he claims that the resin must be added last and that the mixture needs to be stirred for an additional week before being stored.
By experimenting with different combinations of components, Egyptologists Dora Goldsmith and Sean Coughlin were able to recreate a potential Mendesian perfume in 2018, which they characterized as smelling "elegant" and "luxurious." The spicy and mildly musky perfume, which Caro Verbeek, curator of olfactory art, described as "voluminous, red-colored, strong, warm, rich, sweet, and slightly bitter," not only recalled Pliny and Paul's writing, but also lingered longer than many of its modern-day counterparts.
Although intriguing, Goldsmith and Coughlin's experiment is by no means definitive. There is no way of knowing which, if any, of the Greco-Roman recipes matched the original Egyptian, as author Elaine Velie explains in an article she wrote for Hyperallergic. The scientists' soon-to-be-published second attempt, which will be based on actual residue sampled from a third-century BC perfume factory south of Mendes, promises to be more accurate while also revealing how close they came the first time.
Cleopatra’s beauty routine
Perfume was only a tiny component of Cleopatra's extensive beauty regimen. Crushed carmine beetles, still used today to color everything from shampoo to lollipops, are claimed to have been utilized in the lipstick worn by the Egyptian queen, who is credited with popularizing numerous long-lasting cosmetic techniques. In order to revitalize her complexion, Cleopatra also took milk baths—specifically, fermented donkey's milk—and may have scrubbed her face with mixtures of honey, chalk, and apple cider vinegar.
A relief showing the Egyptian perfume-making process. (Credit: Jastrow / Wikipedia)
Although the lack of stink was a luxury few could afford during Cleopatra's day, her beauty regimen obviously had a political component. The queen used her attractiveness as a tool to advance in society and keep control of her country, as both modern and ancient historians have highlighted. She did this when she began dating Julius Caesar and again when she joined a rebellion against the Eternal City alongside Marc Anthony, Caesar's general and rival for Caesar's throne.
When describing her seduction of Anthony, the Roman historian Plutarch mentions perfume. She is supposed to have slept on a canopy covered in gold while sailing down the river Cydnus to see her tragic lover, with servants costumed as cupids fanning her incense across the riverbanks. Modern historians have rejected this derogatory picture of Cleopatra as Augustan propaganda, portraying her instead as an everyday Egyptian lady who merely shared her culture's love of perfume rather than as a cunning siren.
