Liquid Memory Of Hatshepsut's 3,500-Year-Old Perfume {The 5th Sense in the News}

A releatively well-preserved perfume flacon of woman pharaoh Hatshepsut underwent initial analysis and could become the basis of the reconstitution of a liquid fragrance,

"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," Michael Höveler-Müller declares. This idea is not so wide of the mark, as it is a known fact that in the course of her regency Haptshepsut undertook an expedition to Punt - the modern Eritrea, and the Egyptians had been importing precious goods such as ebony, ivory, gold, and just this incense, from there since the third millennium B.C. Apparently the expedition brought back whole incense plants, which Hatshepsut then had planted in the vicinity of her funerary temple."

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Photo credit: statue of Hatshepsut at the MET, Wikimedia Commons.