Egyptologists have done a lot to help us recreate the sights and even the sounds of the ancient world.
But now they’re going even further, by recreating a scent that might have been used by one of Egypt’s most famous figures.
It was a decade ago that professors from the University of Hawaii were working at a site in Mendes, Egypt, where they found evidence of a perfume-making operation dating back several thousand years.
That physical evidence matches what the professors have found in writings from the Romans, who apparently continued to use the site to make perfume.
The texts say the perfume from Mendes was very popular during the reign of Cleopatra.
While these papers include a recipe for the perfume (or at least a Roman version of the original Egyptian scent), the modern world hasn’t been sure what some of the listed ingredients were.
The research team is doing chemical analysis on the perfume site to fill in some of the blanks.
The goal is to recreate the scent that was used in Cleopatra’s time, and maybe even used by the queen herself.
It’s not every day we can breathe in the scent of thousands of years ago, right?
As patents go, this one is pretty unusual.
Weird Universe reported on a patent for a safety harness that generates electricity from a worker who falls off a building!
It’s not as ice cold as it sounds.
The idea is that if a worker wears the harness and then falls, the falling movement could generate enough power to send a message to a rescue crew.
Still, I’m not volunteering to try it out.
What Did Cleopatra Smell Like? (Hyperallergic)
Electricity from falling workers (Weird Universe)
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Painting by Henryk Siemiradzki, via Wikicommons
