Two University of Hawaii at Manoa professors have recreated Cleopatra’s ancient perfume, which will be showcased in a National Geographic exhibit. The UH Tell Timai Project is a decade-long excavation in the ancient Egyptian city Thmuis (Tell Timai) in the Nile Delta launched by College of Languages, Linguistics & Literature Professor Robert Littman and adjunct professor Jay Silverstein.
Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners. Painting by Alexandre Cabanel, 1887 [Credit: WikiCommons] |
A vast complex of third century BCE (Before the Common Era) kilns was discovered. Chemical analysis established that the kilns used imported clays to manufacture fine lekythoi or perfume bottles. In a later Roman occupation, a glass manufacturing kiln was analyzed that may represent the transition from ceramic to the unguentaria or small glass perfume jars used in the Roman period.
In 2012, a manufacturing area for some sort of liquid was uncovered with an adjacent hoard of silver coins and gold and silver jewelry near the kilns suggesting that, possibly, the house of a perfume merchant had been uncovered.
Perfume factory at Tell Timai [Credit: Tell Timai Excavation Project] |
Littman and Silverstein then approached German researchers Dora Goldsmith and Sean Coughlin, experts on ancient Egyptian perfume, to recreate the perfume of Thmuis, based on formulas in ancient Greek texts.
They have reproduced both the myrrh (a natural gum or resin extracted from a number of small, thorny tree species)-based Mendesian and the Metopian perfumes.
Said Littman, “What a thrill it is to smell a perfume that no one has smelled for 2,000 years and one which Cleopatra might have worn.”
These studies of Mendesian perfume have now come together in Washington, D.C. The National Geographic Society opened a new and innovative exhibition on the “Queens of Egypt” that incorporates cutting edge research, virtual reality experience, and the fragrances of the Queens of Egypt.
The work of Littman and Silverstein and the fragrances of Goldsmith and Coughlin are featured in the National Geographic Museum exhibit in Washington, D.C., which runs through September 15.
Source: University of Hawaii [August 14, 2019]
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