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[Sean] Coughlin likens his experiments to the testing process of the cooking show “America’s Test Kitchen.” While the results have been hit-and-miss, he said they are making progress.
For example, one perfume recipe Coughlin studied known as Mendesian indicated that ancient perfumers heated oil for 10 days and 10 nights before infusing it with woods like cinnamon and resins like myrrh.
— Read more in How scientists are decoding what the past smelled like at CNN.
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In the scent formulas on the clay tablets, information such as how Tapputi conducted her studies in the full moon and how she presented it to the stars is written. In other words, we don't only see how was the formula but also the way the scent is made. The tiniest details of the making project also take place. A total of 27 pages appeared from the two tablets. It also took pages to interpret the translation. Lemongrass, myrrh, rose, botanical plants are also mentioned here. After this project is finished, we will have 11 clay tablets left.
— Fragrance specialist Bihter Türkan Ergül, quoted in another article about Tapputi. Read more in 3,200-year-old fragrance formula by Mesopotamian perfumer unveiled at Daily Sabah.
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In her mixtures, according to the clay tablets Tapputi recorded, Tapputi used flowers, oil, and calamus, along with cyperus, myrrh, and balsam. She mixed it with water or other solvents before distilling and filtering it multiple times.
— Read more in The 3,200-year-old perfume of Tapputi, the first female chemist in history, came to life again at Arkeonews.
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But there are many nasal complexities to negotiate – as [Cecilia] Bembibre points out: “It is really hard to get the information you need to bring back smells.” Her own chemical work has reproduced the scent of a 1750s potpourri at Knole – the ancestral home of the Sackville-West family in Kent – a description of which appears in Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando.
She has also reproduced the smell of the library at St Paul’s Cathedral in London by extracting detectable elements from the air in 2017, before it was refurbished. She then invited a specialist perfumer, Sarah McCartney, to attempt to create the same olfactory experience based only on her instincts about its components.
— Read more in A nose for history: academics recreate lost smells from the past at The Guardian.
[Egyptologist Dora] Goldsmith has documented Greco-Roman sources consistently listing four ingredients for Mendesian perfume: myrrh, cassia, resin and oil of balanos (most academics believe this is a species of moringa, others desert date oil). Some accounts also mention cinnamon. [...]
“The way Greeks treated Egyptian recipes was very flexible. They retained some ingredients, but they also changed a lot. The study of how perfume recipes changed from the Egyptians to the Greeks can be referred to as transmission of knowledge in perfumery.”
— Read more in Exploring the forgotten scents of ancient Egypt at Middle East Eye.