A Guide to the History of Perfume - A Selection of Vintage Articles on the Uses and Progress of Perfumery

By Read Books Ltd.

This book contains classic material dating back to the 1900s and before. The content has been carefully selected for its interest and relevance to a modern audience. Carefully selecting the best articles from our collection we have compiled a series of historical and informative publications on the subject of model engineering. Each publication has been professionally curated and includes all details on the original source material. This particular instalment, "A Guide to the History of Perfume" contains information on the use and progress of perfumery. It is intended to illustrate aspects of the history of perfume and serves as a guide for anyone wishing to obtain a general knowledge of the subject and understand the field in its historical context. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Jan 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781447483946

Book preview

Verrill

Forty Centuries of Fragrance

Cleopatra’s nose: Had it been shorter, the whole aspect of the world would have been altered.

PASCAL

IN the sumptuous tomb that had been built for him by Egyptian workers and slaves, the body of the youthful Pharaoh, King Tutankhamen, lay mummified for more than three thousand years. And when the tomb was opened, the containers that once had held perfumes buried with other treasures in the underground chambers still gave forth a fragrance.

It was the fourth of November, in the year 1922, and a party of British scientists were making history in the majestic shadows of the Sphinx and the Pyramids. Excitement ran high among the archaeologists who opened the door leading to a descending stairway for which they had been searching.

In the months that followed, as they examined the treasures of the tomb, the scientists discovered in the cavern ancient Egyptian receptacles for fragrant perfumes and ointments. The materials had evaporated through the ages, but the containers still held the aroma of the substances buried with the king many centuries before.

In the tomb of King Tut were found the oldest flacons for perfumes to survive to modern times, but the creations of the Egyptian apothecaries were not the first man-made odors.

Perfumery traces its origins to the beginnings of civilization. The initial perfumes were offerings to the gods, made by heathen priests. When the priests became the doctors as well, they continued to use perfumes as healing oils.

In almost every land odorous incense was presented by worshippers in their temples. The substances that had a magical power of pleasing one or many of the almighties were valued as curatives and then developed among various early civilizations as a medium of exchange and a beautifier to make the body more alluring.

The earliest Chinese records tell of the use of incense among the Orientals. The Chinese mandarins used a perfume on their robes, the name of which, e hiang, has survived to this day. Their taste ran to the strong and, by our present-day standards, even to the obnoxious. Their great contribution was the discovery of musk, which became renowned throughout the ancient Chinese empires.

The Chinese, in a custom that was later to be found in every citadel of western European culture, burned incense at funerals and, while they marched in burial processions, burned odorous matches.

The Hindus, too, began to burn incense for their gods at the dawn of Asiatic civilization. Their odorous offerings to the deities were made of woods and grasses and included materials used in modern perfumery, the gingergrass and the vetivert.

The culture of the Far East went into an eclipse and left only a relatively vague imprint on our modern civilization. Most interesting in the use of perfumes by these peoples was their discovery of materials that were destined to become important in the art, as well