A team of researchers has recreated one of the scents used in the mummification of an important Egyptian woman more than 3500 years ago.
In an innovative endeavor to create a sensory bridge to the ancient past, a team of researchers led by Barbara Huber of the MPI of Geoanthropology has recreated one of the scents used in the mummification of an important Egyptian woman more than 3500 years ago.
The team's research centered on the mummification substances used to embalm the noble lady Senetnay in the 18th dynasty, circa 1450 BCE. The researchers utilized advanced analytical techniques -- including Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry, High-Temperature Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry, and Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry -- to reconstruct the substances that helped to preserve and scent Senetnay for eternity.
"Our methods were also able to provide crucial insights into balm ingredients for which there is limited information in contemporary ancient Egyptian textual sources," observes Huber. Among those imported ingredients were larch tree resin, which likely came from the northern Mediterranean, and possibly dammars, which come exclusively from trees in Southeast Asian tropical forests. If the presence of dammar resin is confirmed, as in balms recently identified from Saqqara dating to the 1millennium BCE, it would suggest that the ancient Egyptians had access to this Southeast Asian resin via long-distant trade almost a millennium earlier than previously known.
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