19 июня, 2015 
Malyar Early records detail King Sahure’s trip to the fabled land of Punt, believed to be modern day Somalia or Ethiopia, around 2400bc, bringing back, amongst other riches, 8000 measures of myrrh. Temple pictographs dated around 1500bc detail Queen Hatshephut’s journey to Punt, which had the objective of bringing back frankincense trees to replant in Egypt.
Pictographs show courtesans wearing bitcones on their heads, consisting of animal fat impregnated with aromatic materials. In the Egyptian heat this fat melted down the neck, covering the body in an oily, pleasant layer which, whilst workable as an early form of deodorant, could have caused much inconvenience to the wearer, and is a far cry from today’s modern shampoo. Other hieroglyphs depict the great Ramses of Egypt offering incense in thanks to the Gods, while Nefertiti joined Semiramis of Babylon as one of the earliest women to demonstrate the liking of particular products, such as honey and orchid leaf, in her fragrant formulations. Perfume concoctions appear on the wall of the temple of Horus, at Edfu, amongst which is Kyphi, or Kephri, the ‘twice-good’ fragrance, burnt in the early morning and at eventide. A listing of the key ingredients demonstrates a sophistication in the formula at this time, and the wealth of products used. The formula of Kyphi contained spikenard, another prized material, a calcite vase of which was found by Howard Carter in 1922 at King Tutankhamen’s tomb. Two of the most powerful and earliest reputed alchemists, Hermes Trismegitus and Zosimus, hailed from the land of the Nile, and did much to set down the records of their arts as future generations to develop.
The Christian Bible is chock-full of fragrance descriptions, from the early days of the tribes of Israel, when Joseph’s brothers sold him as a slave:
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