I’ve been having fun exploring Egyptologist Dora Goldsmith’s Ancient Egyptian Smell Kit.

Goldsmith reconstructs the smells that ancient sources describe—including the smell of mummification (made up of the many fragrant substances the ancient Egyptians used to mummify their dead, the wood coffins, and the floral garlands placed upon the mummy before the coffin was closed). Two of the scents, Kyphi and Mendesian, were perfumes produced in ancient Egypt. The kit also includes scent reconstructions of ancient Egyptian gardens, festivals, and floral-lined ponds where love poems were set. The temple smell reconstruction is a complex mixture not only of incense and sacred oils used in ancient Egyptian temples, but also the smells of food offerings made to a deity: roast meat, bread, sweet cakes, milk, beer, and wine. Goldsmith includes descriptions of each scent along with excerpts from translated ancient sources mentioning each fragrant substance.

Encountering the scents in this educational, historical context feels simultaneously “transportive” and familiar, taking a subject that can easily feel distant and remote from my present reality, and grounding it in smells I recognize and experience in an intimate, embodied way.