Back to Ancient Egypt: What did Cleopatra’s favorite perfume smell like?

For many years, archaeologists focused on material objects of the ancient world – the remains of amphorae and personal belongings of people. But now they began to pay more attention to the aromatic landscape of that time. And what has plagued researchers for many years is the perfume used by Cleopatra, the last queen of Hellenistic Egypt.

It all started in 2012 when archaeologists Robert Littman and Jay Silverstein discovered a perfume factory (2,300 years old) filled with bottles and amphorae filled with perfume remains. It was noteworthy that it was not far from Mendes, the city where the famous Mendes spirits were named. It is believed that Cleopatra loved to use this fragrance. Due to their popularity among the Egyptian elite, their written recipes were preserved in ancient Greek and Rome, which helped future researchers.

Egyptologist Dora Goldsmith and professor of Greek and Roman philosophy Sean Coughlin have tried to recreate Mendes spirits. In 2019, scientists experimented with ingredients such as desert palm oil, myrrh, cinnamon and pine resin, producing a “persistent, spicy, slightly musty perfume”. But this was just the beginning.

While the team of scientists has come very close to accurately recreating Cleopatra’s eau de toilette, it’s still unclear whether the surviving Roman and Greek descriptions of Mendes perfume match the Egyptian description. Then a team led by Jacopo La Nas, an analytical chemist at the University of Pisa, examined 46 pots, jugs, bowls, and pieces of organic matter from the queen’s tomb. Tests revealed traces of burnt frankincense and myrrh, but not all tests were so successful. And this month in the journal Archaeological Science, the team reported the discovery of traces of oil, grease and wax, all of which could be the basis of a perfume. It looks like the researchers are on the right track and we’ll soon find out what Cleopatra actually drowned in.