Scientists to recreate 3,500-year-old Egyptian perfume

Bonn, March 16 (IANS) Pharaoh Hatshepsut assumed power in Egypt around 1479 BC, on behalf of her three-year-old stepson Thutmose III, and ruled for the next 20 years. One of the perfumes she used during her reign will now be recreated here.

Traces of Hatshepsut's perfume have been found in the filigreed flagon that bears an inscription with her name. 'We think it probable that one constituent of the perfume was incense - the scent of the gods,' said Michael Hoveler-Muller, curator of Bonn University's Egyptian Museum.

Haptshepsut undertook an expedition to Punt - modern Eritrea. The Egyptians had been importing ebony, ivory, gold, and incense from there since the third millennium BC. Apparently this expedition brought back whole incense plants, which Hatshepsut then had planted in the vicinity of her funerary temple.

The flagon - now at the museum here - is exceptionally well preserved. 'So we considered it might be rewarding to have it screened in the Bonn University Clinic's Radiology Department,' Hoveler-Muller explained. 'As far as I know this has never been done before.'

This world premier will now in all probability be followed by another one: 'The desiccated residues of a fluid can be clearly discerned in the x-ray photographs. Our pharmacologists are now going to analyse this sediment.'

Then the scientists are hoping to 'reconstruct' the 3,500-year-old perfume, according to a statement from the museum.