Perfume
Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential
oils and aroma compounds, fixatives, and
solvents used to give the human body, anim-
als, objects, and living spaces a "pleasant"
smell.
History
Egyptian scene depicting the preparation of
Lily perfume
The word perfume used today derives from
the Latin "per fumum", meaning through
smoke. Perfumery, or the art of making per-
fumes, began in ancient Mesopotamia and
Egypt and was further refined by the Romans
and Persians. Although perfume and per-
fumery also existed in India, much of its fra-
grances are incense based. The earliest distil-
lation of Attar was mentioned in the Hindu
Ayurvedic text Charaka Samhita. The Har-
shacharita, written in 7th century A.D. in
Northern India mentions use of fragrant
agarwood oil.
The world’s first recorded chemist is con-
sidered to be a woman named Tapputi, a per-
fume maker who was mentioned in a cunei-
form tablet from the second millennium BC in
Mesopotamia.[1] She distilled flowers, oil,
and calamus with other aromatics then
filtered and put them back in the still several
times.[2]
Recently, archaeologists have uncovered
what are believed to be the world’s oldest
perfumes in Pyrgos, Cyprus. The perfumes
date back more than 4,000 years. The per-
fumes were discovered
in an ancient
Etruscan perfume vase shaped like a female
head
perfumery. At least 60 stills, mixing bowls,
funnels and perfume bottles were found in
the 43,000-square-foot (4,000 m2) factory.[3]
In ancient times people used herbs and
spices, like almond, coriander, myrtle, con-
ifer resin, bergamot, as well as flowers.[4]
The Arabian chemist, Al-Kindi (Alkindus),
wrote in the 9th century a book on perfumes
which he named Book of the Chemistry of
Perfume and Distillations. It contained more
than a hundred recipes for fragrant oils,
salves, aromatic waters and substitutes or
imitations of costly drugs. The book also de-
scribed 107 methods and
recipes
for
perfume-making, and even the perfume mak-
ing equipment, like the alembic, still bears its
Arabic name[5].
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