Scientists aim to recreate 3,500-year-old Egyptian perfume
Press Trust of India
Thursday, March 19, 2009, (London)
German scientists are on track to recreate a 3,500-year-old scent, which they claim was cherished by ancient Egyptians.
Using a computer tomograph, a team at Bonn University has detected the desiccated residues of a "fluid" which it now wants to submit to further analysis, and mulls reconstruction of the 3,500-year-old perfume well preserved in its museum.
"The desiccated residues of a fluid can be clearly discerned in the x-ray photographs. Our pharmacologists are now going to analyse this sediment," Michael Hveler-Mller, the curator of Bonn University's Egyptian Museum, said.
The results could be available in a good year's time and if successful the perfume might be reconstructed, he said.
In fact, the filigree flacon now under examination by actually bears an inscription with the name of famous Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut, clearly suggesting it was probably once in her possession, a university release said
Pharaoh Hatshepsut was a power-conscious woman who assumed the reins of government in Egypt around year 1479 BC.
Though she's only supposed to represent her stepson Thutmose III, three years old at the time, till he was old enough to take over, the interregnum lasted 20 years.
"She systematically kept Thutmose out of power. Hatshepsut's perfume is also presumably a demonstration of her power. We think it probable that one constituent was incense -- the scent of the Gods," Hveler-Mller said.
Hatshepsut died in 1457 BC. Analysis of the mummy ascribed to her showed that the ruler was apparently between 45 and 60 years of age at the end of her life; she was also overweight and suffering from diabetes, cancer and arthritis.