The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum & Planetarium in San Jose, California is offering family workshops on Egyptian Oils & Perfumes on the 2nd Sunday of every month:
Perfumes were often used in temple rituals as well as everyday life. Discover how oils and perfumes were used in ancient Egypt and experience the scents of various types of perfumes.
The workshops are free with admission ($5-9). For more information, see the museum website. Thanks to Luminous Phenomena for the tip!
I have been tempted by these perfume workshops at the Rosicrucian more than once. I think I would enjoy knowing more about Egyptian perfume use than further exploration into mummification. ‘-)
Oh, if you go, do come back and tell us if it was fun!
I will, Robin!
I’ve been to the Rosicrucian a few times since I was a kid. It is great fun!! You go down into a mummy’s tomb…..fabulous!! They have a small planetarium, too. It’s very nice.
Hadn’t heard about ancient perfume workshops..I’ll have to check it out. The 2nd Sunday in October has already come and gone–I’ll have to make a note for next month.
Again, do report back!
I loved going to this museum as a child.. been quite a few years ago, but still remember. Next time I am back in San Jose with my kids I will take them. But I would love to sniff these, what a wonderful experiance it would be.
This smells like a good idea!
This would be so much fun to attend. A pity it isn’t in every city. Oh well, travel is good for the soul.
Oooh! I posted about the Rosicrucian Museum’s perfume connection on a DSH post a while ago. (I volunteered at the museum this summer.) One of the four mummies there is that of a young girl, and her coffin and face marks are liberally slathered with perfumed oils, which have blackened and stained the exterior. When she underwent extensive scanning to ‘see’ her without unwrapping, the museum also sent samples of the perfume remnants to a lab. The lab was able to deduce precisely what went into the perfume & how much of it, and made a small amount of it available to the museum. It was sadly too pricey for them to stock in the gift shop, but they break out the recreated perfume for these workshops so the participants can smell an honest-to-goodness Ancient Egyptian perfume.
From http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/august10/mummy-081005.html?view=print :
“The musky perfume poured on the child’s body—the remains of which appears as a kind of black tar around her face and neck—also was reproduced by Berkeley alchemist Mandy Aftel, who identified the primary ingredients as frankincense and myrrh, bathed in moringa oil. Most likely, the last contact the parents had with their child was the moment in which they poured this perfume, mixed with resin, onto the girl’s body at the funeral to send her off to a sweet-scented afterlife, Schwappach-Shirriff said.”
Seriously! If I get to smell this perfume, I definitely have to go to one of these workshops. I did see that Mandy had created a scent based on the lab results of this mummy, but I didn’t realize (or maybe just forgot) that you can smell it at the work shop. Thanks for letting us know, graziaplena.
If you can’t get to the Rosicrucian Museum, the Scents of Time five fragrances from The Perfumed Court are recreations by David Pybus who reconstructs ancient perfumes from archeological evidence.
And the British Museum gift shop has a wonderful Egyptian Oils gift set including book of history and possible recipes. One can then anoint her feet with the same exquisite mix Cleopatra herself preferred, based on cinnamon oil!
Oh, thanks maleslie! I hadn’t seen those on TPC. I need to go check those out also.
Does anyone know if Dallas or Ft Worth are having any of these going on?