‘Scent of eternity’ worn by ancient Egyptian mummy has been revealed

Eternity smells like a concoction of beeswax, bitumen, plant oil and tree resin. That’s in keeping with researchers who’ve simply analysed the substances used to embalm an historical Egyptian noblewoman – Senetnay – who died about 3500 years in the past.

Sniffing out the merchandise used throughout mummification not solely helps us higher perceive how the traditional Egyptians handled their lifeless, but in addition what commerce routes they relied on to entry uncommon substances.

Senetnay is alleged to have nursed Amenhotep II, a pharaoh of historical Egypt’s 18th dynasty – a dynasty that additionally included well-known rulers Tutankhamun and Hatshepsut. Senetnay was buried within the Valley of the Kings close to the traditional city of Thebes, the modern-day metropolis of Luxor.

Barbara Huber on the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany and her colleagues used state-of-the-art analytical know-how — similar to fuel chromatography-mass spectrometry — to unpack the chemical composition of the balm residue present in two of the jars that held Senetnay’s organs throughout the mummification course of.

This is probably the most advanced mummification balm discovered from this era in historical Egyptian historical past, in keeping with Huber, and the scent extracted from it’s so subtle that she dubbed it “the scent of eternity”.

“The dominant smell, I would say, is like this strong pine-like woody scent of the conifers. But then it’s also a little bit intermingled with a sweeter undertone of the beeswax,” she says. “And then we have this kind of strong smoky scent of the bitumen. It’s a little bit like freshly laid tar on a street.”

But it’s the tree resins, particularly, that Huber’s group. Their evaluation suggests the balm in all probability contained resin from larch timber. It may have contained resin from pistachio timber, or maybe a so-called dammar gum.

These three substances aren’t naturally present in Egypt, as larches and pistachios primarily develop within the northern Mediterranean, and dammar comes from timber that develop in South-East Asian forests. This means that historical Egyptians had been importing items by way of far-reaching commerce routes at an earlier date than researchers had beforehand thought. For occasion, a examine printed earlier this yr additionally discovered dammar in a mummification balm utilized in historical Egypt, however Senetnay’s mummy predates that instance by a thousand years.

“If the ingredients are what they say they are, it suggests a much more connected world than we might otherwise have thought,” says Sean Coughlin on the Czech Academy of Sciences, who was not concerned within the examine. “We might wonder what equipment, skills, and ideas would have traveled with them along the trade routes.”

Huber has unanswered questions on whether or not these balms had been chosen for particular causes — maybe as a result of they work as antimicrobials or pesticides. She additionally wonders whether or not completely different organs had been mummified utilizing completely different balms, as her preliminary knowledge suggests, and if this was an intentional selection that carried some significance.

“Data for embalming materials for the 18th dynasty are lacking, so this is a very welcome addition to the corpus of information,” says Kate Fulcher, who previously analysed embalming materials on the British Museum and was not concerned within the examine.

“We don’t know much, or anything really, about who conducted the ceremony and what was said,” Fulcher says. “This appears to have been secret or controlled knowledge and we don’t have any writing about it.”