What Does a Mummy Smell Like?

Pause for a moment to ponder what a mummy smells like. Stinky? Musty? Dusty? What if I told you ‘woody, spicy and slightly sweet.’ Apparently, that’s what mummy archeologists and scent-expert ‘super-sniffers’ find. The discovery of an Egyptian undertaker’s 3,500-year-old workshop helped researchers understand why. When pharaohs or Egyptian nobles died, they could afford elaborate embalming rituals to prepare for a transition to the afterlife. First the body was washed. Then all organs but the heart were removed and placed in special jars. The lungs, liver, stomach and intestines were each preserved in their own ceramic resting places. The body was then dried using a mixture of ash and baking soda to preserve it and stop most bacterial decay. Then it was wrapped in many layers of bandages, and finally coated in fragrant tree resins, which would bond with the linen. Scientists analyzed the many resins found in the ancient workshop, and discovered they came from plants across the vast Egyptian empire and its trading routes into India, Africa and the Philippines. They went so far as to work with modern perfumers to recreate the smell of the mummy embalming blend. They combined resins from damar, elemi, cedar and pistachio to create a fragrance they dubbed, wait for it, “Scent of Eternity.” But if you’re dying to smell like a mummy, unfortunately, the perfume is not yet on the market.