The History of the Schism Between Ancient Perfumery and Its Modern-Day Counterparts
by Raed Rady
ed. What is perfumery? What is aromatherapy? Are they the same? Are they different? Is one part of another?
Is one better than another? Is one synthetic and the other natural? Can an aromatherapist be a perfumer?
Can a perfumer be an aromatherapist?
To the layman, this is all very confusing. To the professionals, aromatherapist or perfumers,
it seems very clear-cut. Hardly! This discrepancy hurts us all. It leads to feelings of superiority
of one profession over another. It makes the education of the public difficult and leaves us all
vulnerable to exploitation regardless of form. It was not, however, until I was reviewing this
article that I became aware of the degree of our misinformation or true lack of knowledge.
I certainly hope that you enjoy this article as much as I did. We are truly privileged to have
Mr. Rady's willingness to share his exhaustive knowledge on the subject. This groundbreaking
material should leave you with a much greater understanding and reverence for your art.
Let us start by assuming a defense against the attitude held by some individuals
that have named
themselves aromatherapists and hold the belief "us" and "them." By them, I mean
anybody related
to the perfume industry. To define perfumery it is necessary to expose you to a
certain amount of
background information. We will divide these into certain basic points:
First, that beautiful
smells were essential to the Egyptian system at every level as was their
fundamental belief that
cleanliness is godliness; second, that the Egyptians had the ability to distill
essential oils
for thousands of years ago; finally, that the true knowledge of perfumery became lost as a
result of a series of religious and political upheavals over the centuries that led to
a continuous
dilution of knowledge until its final rupture in the Middle Ages.
What most people do not realize is that, from the very beginning, the whole issue of perfumery
was enveloped in secrecy. The art began in Egypt several thousand years ago and was
mastered by about 2500 BC (although it started much earlier). It was practiced by a certain
type or a certain order of priesthood. Mainly in the temple of Denderah1, which was the source of all the products created.
The Egyptian system was very complicated, precise and specific at the every level of existence.
Yet, in this complexity, there was total unification. As an example, and as an important
point for our understanding of perfumery, there was no distinction between what we would call today
cosmetics, perfume, body care products, bath products, food flavoring, food preservation,
religious ceremonies, magic, pharmaceuticals and medicines. All of these aspects were combined
together and related to the practice of the priesthood for healing. This was perfumery.
Furthermore, it is important to realize, that at that time, healing referred
to all aspects of the human being2. There was again, no distinction between a physical,
emotional,
mental or spiritual ailment. Perfumery was practiced in order to achieve spiritual perfection
not physical perfection3. That was only achieved by perfecting the lower bodies of the physical,
emotional and mental layers of the human being.
If you could grasp how fundamentally important smell was in the Egyptian system,
you may be able to realize why the art and science of perfumery came about.
It may also begin to explain why the Egyptians were so motivated to learn
the process of the extraction of essential oils so many thousands of years ago.
Perhaps the following quotes from The Book of the Dead (a version from the M. Maspero papyrus.)
will be illuminating. (This is a kind of prayer that the priests would recite while rituals were being
performed in the mummification process.)
The perfume of Arabia hath been brought to thee to make perfect thy smell through the scent of the god. Here are brought to thee liquids which have come forth from Ra to perfect- thy smell in the Hall [of Judgment]. O sweet smelling soul of the great god, thou dost contain such a sweet odour that thy face shall neither change nor perish- Thy members shall become young in Arabia, and thy soul shall appear over thy body in Ta-neter (i.e. the divine land.)
"The Ritual of Embalmment, " p.185
In a similar vein, the following quotes are prayers given as the embalmer anointed the
body with oils from head to toe.
Osiris (i.e., the deceased), thou hast received the perfume which shall make thy members perfect.
Thou receivest the source [of life] and thou takest the form of the great Disk (i.e., Aten), which
uniteth itself unto thee to give enduring form to thy members; thou shalt unite with Osiris in the
great Hall. The unguent cometh unto thee to fashion thy members and to gladden thy heart,
and thou shalt appear in the form of Ra; it shall make thee to be sound when thou settest
in the sky at eventide, and it shall spread abroad the smell of thee in the nomes of Aqer-Thou receivest
the oil of cedar in Amentet, and the cedar which came forth from Osiris cometh unto thee; it delivereth
thee from thy enemies, and it protecteth thee in the nomes. Thy soul alighteth upon the venerable
sycamores. Thou criest to Isis and Osiris heareth
thy voice, and Anubis cometh unto thee to invoke thee. Thou receivest the oil of the country of
Manu which hath come from the East, and Ra riseth upon thee at the gates of the horizon, at the
holy doors of Neith. Thou goest therein, thy soul is in the upper heaven, and thy body is in the
lower heaven-. O Osiris, may the Eye of Horus cause that which floweth forth from it to come to thee,
and to thy heart forever!
"The Use of Oil in Mummification," p186
Oh ointment! Oh ointment, arise, Hurray! Thou who art in the brow of Horus arise first quality cedar
oils.
Ancient Egyptian Magic by Bob Brier, p. 78
The problem with Egyptologists in the past was that they interpreted the writings and
the books according to their own education or religious background. So this always put
some kind of filter on their perception, which hindered their understanding. Naturally,
few Egyptians went into the work of translation, putting back together the information we
have from our society and our heritage. This is one of the parts that was overlooked.
But to us, it was the secret of the whole system. I wish to stress most emphatically
the following notions as the secret of the whole Egyptian order:
- Perfect smell = Alive and Living
- Perfumes make the members [bodily parts] and their functions perfect.
- The source of smell is the god of Ra who is the god of the sun.
The Egyptians believed that every god was the representative of a specific scent. They also believed
that when a person had reached perfection that he or she exuded a perfect smell. To smell beautifully
was a sign of holiness. When a person died the Egyptians believed that only those who were perfect
smelling would be received by the gods and therefore their mummification process was designed to
ensure that end.
The Egyptians had seven sacred oils4 that they considered important above all others.
The most important of all was that of cedar.
The container for the cedar oil always had written on the outside "First Quality Cedar Oil."
They never used any other quality, which suggests other qualities existed. They redistilled oils.
When Egyptians mummified the body, they removed all the organs. They kept some and got rid of those
that they could not dry. For example, they could not keep the brain. They kept the liver, the
heart and the intestines because they were able to dry they and preserve them in an oil that
would prevent decay. Believe me this is the basis of mummification. This is the whole deification
of Anubis.5
The enemy of the Egyptians was decay and fermentation. This was representative of night--the other side.
It was the function of Anubis to help mummify the body to go from one state to the other state of
new life without decay. When they mummified the body, they used a kind of salt called natron
(sodium carbonate). It was used to dehydrate the body, to absorb fluids as water was the carrier
of decay. The only way to clean a body--to clear it from agents of decay whether they were spirits,
demons, followers of the evil god Set was to rid the body of water. Therefore, the most important
part of mummification was how to dry the body so in the end you would have only the skin bones and
certain bodily organs that they were able to dry.
Now here is my point and one that is my theory alone. It has not been written or spoken of
by any other but my research confirms it and I shall try to support it. In the mummification
process, the Egyptians did not use the oils just to preserve the body from fermentation
and decay. They believed that each oil represented different parts of the body! This
would allow the ba2 or soul, when it returned to the body, to recreate all the missing
vital organs using oils and resins as materials.
I came to this conclusion from reading the spells in The Book of the Dead. Some of the spells
would contain the name of what an oil would be doing and what the name of that oil represented. For
example, cedar oil was used to keep the whole body in a state of purity. As I said the god of cedar
was Osiris himself. So for the Egyptians, cedarwood oil was the oil that had the ability to kill those
germs that would cause decay of flesh. They used other oils, but there is a lot of controversy about
what they were.
Now the important point here in this definition of perfumery is to set the fact that the Egyptians,
in their use of cedar oil in mummification were actually using distilled essential oils.
How do we know this? Because there is no way except by distillation to generate such pure oils
(especially that of cedar.)6
Cedar oil could never come from maceration or extraction by infusion.
The final point that we need to establish is the series of events that took place that robbed perfumery
of its original meaning. When the Greeks invaded Egypt, they saw the power of the oils but
they were not interested in the complicated Egyptian system. They wanted only the medicinal
knowledge from the priesthood. After 3,000 years, the priesthood had a fairly incredible
fount of knowledge and they were not about to give it up. By the time of Alexander,
the Greeks began to oppress the priests to the point of almost forcing them to give up their
information. However, the priests would not give them all the information or they would give
them half truths and give them the names of fictional plants for ingredients.
Now I am sure that you are asking why would they do this? Well, the priests had discovered the
true power of the oils and believed that no other civilization had the maturity, evolution or
self-control to handle this knowledge. All other civilizations that were around them were
very primitive and hostile. You have to remember that the main purpose of the use of the
oils was spiritual--to make perfect thy smell--as a method to achieve and reflect that they had
attained total harmony in all their being physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. The priests,
therefore, believed that they were the only ones who could use the oils safely, appropriately and could
safeguard them from negative uses.
The Egyptians believed that some types of perfumes added to one's personal power. This gave one the ability to subdue another or even to have control over situations and events. For this, they used the word ameh.
This word is a good example of the complexity of the system that I have been alluding to.
When used as a noun ameh means "perfume."
But, when it is used as a verb, it means "to have power over." Another conviction they
held was when one was perfume, that he or she had the ability to cause things to happen.
For example, if you wished to seduce someone with an aphrodisiac, the word used, segmu,
does not mention aphrodisiac, rather it means "having the ability to do something.:
They word to subdue others by making them weak and helpless was sgemu.
Now perhaps you can understand why Egyptian priests, would not wish their formulas to fall
into the hands of the primitive.
You may say, but what about the Greeks? They were highly cultured. Yes, but they also indulged in
sexuality in a way that Egyptians thought could harm them very much. The Greeks only wanted the
oils for their sexual practices, cosmetics, incense and medicines. Their intent was not at all
spiritual. For example, they wanted to use the keyphi, which was created for the most sacred of
purposes as an aphrodisiac.
After the defeat of the Greeks by the Romans, we found the same type of problem only much worse.
For the most part, they used the oils as the Greeks for indulgence in sexuality. However, they
did return more to the medicinal uses of the oils. They had a very large empire with their people
spread over areas that had serious plagues. They needed to keep their slaves healthy and their people
working so they wanted to free them from disease. At that time, disease was considered to be of
two types: either caused by an obvious source such as broken bone or caused by an unknown
source--demons or spirits. For this latter, they burned aromatic gums and resins.
It was the Romans who gave us the actual term perfume from "per" which means through and "fumum,"
which means the smoke. They thought aromatic material could only be released into the air
through burning. This was combined with prayer (the closest they came to spirituality).
This volatility through the smoke was considered to be the best way to appease the gods
and those spirits that cause disease and other problems.
The word perfume could also be a translation of one of the words that hasn't survived. It is logical
that every civilization names everything that it uses, sees and does. The civilizations that come
after them try to translate or understand these words and their meanings. I mentioned before
that the Egyptians had a very specific, precise and complicated approach to naming things.
For example, there were 18 different names for the word "perfume." Each name was a network
of subsystems relating to the highest point. For example, Mehru was the god of perfume,
the main entity who organized perfume as a science. There was a different entity for the
use of incense use at the temple. The actual names were based on the materials used, the
occasion for their use, the type of disease that was being treated, if
any, what part of the body, it was used on. The method of application< and so on.
The Egyptians had so many names that we could do an article on just that topic alone.
It is actually a very interesting subject. There was always a total concept behind
the name that would help us remember. For instance, the incense for scenting a home--using
a scenter to burn incense--is different from the type of incense used in the temple. Therefore two
different words used. Similarly, the perfume used for medicine would have a different name that
the spices used in cooking. The word sti was a word that meant "smell" or "scent" but it also meant
"setting the divine fire or flame." The Egyptians also had lots of ointments and oils that were
used during massage. In that case, they would use the same word for unguent or perfume
that they would use for skin, khar. This indicated the application of that type of perfume.
But they also used the same word to mean "to make angry."
However, the word that I am referring to here is the word that we know today as "perfume." Although
it was a Roman word, they took the word from the Greeks ( not the same word, they translated it from
the Greeks who translated it from the Egyptians). In other words, they took the concept and gave it
their own word. The important point to remember here is that they used this one word--perfume--to represent
the whole system!
Although the Egyptians had many methods and uses for essential oils, the Greeks only took some of them. The Greeks wanted to simplify things. They were not sophisticated in their use of words and systems. They were not religious. They wanted perfumes for their baths, cosmetics and medicines, period. The Romans narrowed this concept even further. For them, the Egyptian system was just too much. The Egyptian concept of beauty in the sense of raising the emotional level of a human being within a total system involving different words for each element made them cry, "Enough!"
The Romans were a civilization that could be described as down to earth.
They didn't want to go into any depth. For them, sexuality was very basic, and
they didn't care about the emotional development and perfection. The Romans, who
could not take the Egyptian complexity, found themselves in a labyrinth of words.
They wanted something easy. So they used one word to cover many things. The Egyptian
system of perfumery included magic, religion, medicine, pharmacology, cosmetics
and chemistry. What was once integrated into one system has evolved into what it is
today--separated, independent powerful sciences, totally unrelated to each other.
Whereas in ancient Egypt each priest would have to have some knowledge of all these,
there was no distinction or separation.
The Romans abused essential oils. They used them so heavily that I caused many financial problems.
When the Christian priesthood took over the Roman Empire, they saw how the Romans used the oils and
perfumery. They saw the tremendous indulgence in sexuality and the waste of money and named this as
the main source of sin. This was the main reason that the church stepped in and the original meaning
of perfumery was lost for good. It was the Roman Catholic Church in the 5th century AD that is responsible
for the schism that we have today.
However, in the Middle Ages, the greatest deviance from the true meaning perfumery occurred. The Europeans assumed a terrible way of living. They were very dirty. The Europeans had fear of water touching their body. They never bathed. The smell was terrible. No one except the church was burning incense. Everyone outside was in a terrible condition. Disease was everywhere. Also at this time, anyone who was caught at work, home or any other place manufacturing any perfumes was under suspicion for being a magician, alchemist or was working with the devil. If caught one would be tortured or burned at the stake. From the 5th to the 11th century was a very dark period. There was total decay and rottenness until, finally during the Crusades, the soldiers began to bring perfumery back to Europe again.
Hopefully, you will give this some thought and see that what we have today is a separation into many
segments of what was once a great, powerful and metaphysical system. How grand it would be for the
aromatherapist, perfumer, doctor, chemist and spiritual leader to once again unite. Then maybe we
will be on the way toward a true meaning of healing.
Notes
- Denderah was the temple in which pharmaceutical products were made. There is a
scene on one of the walls of the temple that shows what is presumably a method of distillation.
There was a large round pot with a small opening at the top, which was divided in the middle
by a type of sieve. Next to the pot was a large vessel, large piece of linen and pottery band.
It is like a jigsaw puzzle, but when you put them together it shows what I believe is the ancient
method of distillation. We presume that they placed plant material in the top section and water
in the bottom, below the sieve. The linen was folded into several layers and placed over the top opening.
Then the pottery band secured the linen tightly around the neck of the opening so
that nothing could escape. Finally a fire was placed below. When the water boiled the
vapor went through the plant material until a vapor of steam and essential oils would rise and soak
in the linen. When the process was completed,
the linen was removed and squeezed in the other large vessel. Once the entire batch cooled down,
the oil would rise to the top and then could be easily skimmed off.
Even though this is only a theory,
it is still done in Egypt today. The locals do it, the poor farmers do it.
So this is a technique that we have inherited from the past.
- The Egyptians thought of the body as having seven layers that connected with a divine body,
which has the eighth layer. The first body or khat was the physical body. The second or
etheric body or khaibit means shadow because it was a shadow of the physical body, a second
being. However, the most important of all the layers was the fifth body called the ba or
"higher thought," which some people consider to be the soul. But, for the Egyptian,
it was different than our concept of the soul. It was the container of the lower three bodies--the
"shadow," all the "desires, emotions and sexuality" contained in the third body or ka and the
"heart" or "basic thought" contained in the forth body or ab. It is the ba that moves on to the
"other life" after death.
- The Egyptians believed that plants had healing power in their spirit. The embodiment of that spirit, for them, was the essential oils that they extracted from those plants. The power was not in the chemistry, rather the chemistry itself was literally the physical embodiment of the healing spirit.
- The seven sacred oils used for mummification as well as when the person was alive, were
1. the Festival Perfume, 2. Hekenu, 3. The Syrian Balsam, 4. Nechenem, 5. Anointing Oil, 6. The Best Cedar Oil,
7. The Best Libyan Oil. These oils also formed the basis of all the Egyptian magical oils. The best set of containers found is currently on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
- Anubis is the jackal-headed god. Some people think it is a dog but actually it is a
jackal. Anubis is the god of chemistry and mummification. The Egyptians explain its function as
"recreating life from decay." Jackals tear the body of their prey. They cut them into pieces and
separate every part. Each part of the body has a different timing for
fermentation and decay.
This is what they don't put them together. Each part is separated from the other so
as to not
affect the timing for decay of another. (This is why Anubis is representative of the
analytical
mind and logic).
- We found in the tomb of King Tut base oils as well as unguents. Within the unguents
were crystals that could never exist without having originally been essential oils in
their pure form. This means that the essential oils had oxidized. There were other
oils there--sesame, almond, olive and the like--but that is a different story. They change in a different way. King Tut was in the 18th dynasty around 1360 BC.
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