Eau de Afterlife: What Do Ancient Egyptian Mummies Smell Like?

Coming soon to a fragrance counter near you: “Eternal Essence” — With Top Notes of Frankincense and a Whisper of Decay.

By Darren Marlar, host of the Weird Darkness podcast.

Move over, Chanel No. 5. There’s a new fragrance in town, and it’s about 5,000 years old. According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (I’ll bet that’s a real page turner!), ancient Egyptian mummies are here to challenge your assumptions—because they actually smell pretty darned good. Who knew the afterlife had such a delightful aroma?

For the first time ever, researchers conducted a deep sniff—err, systematic odor and chemical analysis—of several mummies from different time periods. Where do you apply for this job?  And more importantly – why would you? And what qualifies you to become a researcher? Do they take a measurement of your nose length to see if it’s larger than average? Does the thickness of your nose hairs have any bearing on whether or not you’re hired? What if you’re allergic to horror tropes? Anyway – the researchers’ noses (and probably a little bit of science) detected an unexpected bouquet: woody, spicy, and herbal notes, with hints of smoke, flowers, tea, and… of course… dust. Think “ancient apothecary meets great-grandma’s attic” with just a touch of Universal Horror Monsters.

And because science is all about sharing, researchers are now working to recreate these scents so visitors to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo can experience “Eau de Pharaoh” firsthand! Who needs audio tours when you can sniff your way through history?  And then it’s not much of a leap (or in this case, a mummy’s lumber) to making these scents available via retail so the special woman in your life can also smell like a long-dead and rotted away Cleopatra!

The idea came to lead researcher Matija Strlič during a visit to a conservation lab, where he encountered a freshly excavated mummy that, to his surprise, smelled… uh… nice.  I can only assume Matija likes living dangerously by working around dead things without wearing a face mask. “Hey guys, give her a whiff! Five thousand years in the ground and she’s still turning heads!  Er, uh, nostrils!”

Okay, he didn’t really say that.  His actual quote was, “It had almost a cosmetic smell—pleasantly sweet and herbal.”  But that’s boring and would make every horror film scriptwriter sigh in disappointment.

Researcher Cecilia Bembibre, who was also part of the study, chimed in with the understatement of the century: “We were surprised at the pleasantness of them.” Honestly, so am I, Cecilia.  But then, in Egypt they eat Feseekh, made by fermenting and salting mullet fish.  That doesn’t instill me with a lot of confidence.

So, why do these ancient folks smell so fancy? The secret lies in the mummification process—basically the OG self-care routine. Here’s how it went down:

First, brain drain. Embalmers removed the brain through the nostrils with a hook. Yes, it’s as gross as it sounds – and has apparently already been done to every single researcher who sticks their nose into rotted corpses to see what they smell like.

Next, organ removal.  They took out the stomach, intestines, liver, and lungs—placing each in canopic jars guarded by the sons of Horus, who apparently doubled as organ security guards.  I’m guessing these ingredients could probably also be used to make Feseekh if fermented fish wasn’t available.

Then there’s the salt scrub.  The body was dehydrated with natron (a natural salt) because nothing says “fresh” like 40 days of dry rub.  Plus, salt brings out the flavor of Feseekh!

And finally, scented oils and resins.  The body got a luxurious spa treatment with oils like frankincense, myrrh, and cedar from the local Bath & Body Works to lock in that “afterlife-fresh” feeling.

The result? A corpse that could out-smell a sale at Yankee Candles.

And frankincense and myrrh? Does that mean they gave the baby Jesus the equivalent of flower-scented formaldehyde that first Christmas? They gifted him a sweet-smelling preservative?  I guess nothing says “happy birthday” like a big jar of monosodium glutamate!

To capture the mummies’ ancient aromas, scientists used a technique borrowed from perfumers. They vacuumed the air around the mummies into special cartridges designed to trap odor molecules—kind of like bottling ancient whispers from beyond the grave. Wait, a procedure borrowed from perfumers? So they suck up smells from dead things already? Does my wife know she’s wearing fermentation fumes on her flesh?

Initially, they only planned to collect scents from display cases, but thanks to some generous curators at the Cairo Museum, they got to sniff straight from the sarcophagi. Gee… uh… thanks?

The results were as varied as your Aunt Karen’s perfume collection:
– Some mummies had notes of cedar and frankincense. This was described as luxurious and earthy, but it could just as easily be described as smelling like your dad’s workshop in the woodshed behind the house.
– Other mummies were more waxy, dusty, and, well, crypt-like. I.E. they smelled like your Aunt Ethel.
– And, of course, if a mummy was “past its prime” the smell took a sharp turn toward rancid. Much like the gym socks you left in your school locker decades ago that are likely still there because teenagers don’t understand the concept of laundry. And how long does it take for a mummy to go rancid? They’re already five-thousand years old. That’s one heckuva shelf-life. Maybe instead of aromas, we should be looking at mummies for techniques to keep our dairy products from going bad in the fridge after only a couple of weeks.

While the study didn’t solve every mystery (like why a waxy, orange-peel-smelling compound, appeared), it did show that smells can be powerful clues. The hope is that museums can eventually use “scent alarms” to catch decaying mummies early—because, let’s face it, nobody wants a whiff of “Pharaoh’s Phunk.” Not a good smell, but a great musical genre though, I’d bet! Kick it off of Steve Martin’s “King Tut” and make it funky!

For museum-goers, this research offers an exciting new way to experience the past. Soon, visitors could be smelling history—without the curses or tomb dust. Matija Strlič sums it up best:
“Odors are a valuable part of cultural heritage. We want to share that experience with the public.”

So soon we might be seeing “Scratch-and-Sniff” history tours!  Eh, I don’t know about that.

There is a positive social side to all of this.  If someone in your near future says, “Whew! You smell like something died” you can say thank you, because that’s clearly a compliment now.

(Source: All That’s Interesting)

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