Episode 1 — Perfume Before Perfume
The history of perfume is, first of all, the history of a very ancient human gesture: burning, anointing, purifying, leaving something in the air that cannot be seen, but can be felt. Before becoming a personal choice, before inhabiting bottles, sprays, and elegant homes, perfume was smoke, resin, oil, offering.
It was not born as a simple ornament. It was born as a practice. As a language. As a way to bring the body closer to a higher dimension, or to make a space more suited to ritual, care, and the presence of others.
The very origin of the word perfume is often linked to the Latin per fumum, meaning “through smoke.” It is a root that clearly expresses the initial connection between fragrant matter, combustion, and ritual. Perfume, in this primordial form, was not something to wear: it was something that rose. A substance that, as it burned, changed state and filled the air.
One of the most interesting testimonies of ancient perfumery is that of Tappūtī-bēlat-ekallim, a figure attested in a Middle Assyrian cuneiform tablet. The source is important because it does not speak vaguely of a “love of perfumes,” but of an actual recipe: a perfumed oil intended for the king, attributed to the words of Tappūtī, who is identified as a perfumer. It is a precious detail, because it shows that, already in the Mesopotamian world, the preparation of fragrant substances required skill, procedure, and technical memory.
It is worth avoiding a fairly common mistake, however: turning Tappūtī into a kind of modern mythological figure, loading her with meanings that the sources do not allow us to prove. What we can say with reasonable certainty is already quite remarkable: there is written evidence of Assyrian perfumery, connected to the court, to the preparation of oils, and to a knowledge of formulation. There is no need to add legend when the document itself is already fascinating.
History of perfume
In ancient Egypt, perfume played an even broader role. According to the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, Egyptian perfumes were often fat-based; among the ingredients most frequently mentioned in texts are frankincense, myrrh, cinnamon, cassia, and cardamom. This means we are far from the modern idea of an alcoholic, volatile, sprayed perfume. Egyptian perfumery was closer to the unguent, to oil, to a substance that adheres to the skin and accompanies the body.
Perfume, however, did not belong only to the person. It also belonged to spaces. Aromatic materials, especially incense, were used in religious and funerary rites. In antiquity, incense often held a sacred value, connected to the gods, eternal life, and the separation between ordinary life and ritual. In this sense, the history of perfume is never only the history of the skin. It is also the history of shared air.
History of perfume
There is also a less poetic but crucial element: production. Ancient perfume was not only imagination; it was also work. At Pyrgos, on the island of Cyprus, the Italian Archaeological Mission of the CNR uncovered what is described as the oldest known perfume factory in the Mediterranean, dating back to the second millennium BC. Sources from the Musei Capitolini and the CNR connect the site to oil processing and perfume production, also through experimental reconstructions of ancient fragrances.
This detail slightly changes the perspective. Perfume is not only an elegant trail left in history by palaces and temples. It is also supply chain, raw material, container, workshop, repeated gesture. Behind scent there are hands gathering plants, oils left to macerate, resins arriving from afar, vessels made to preserve and transport.
In the Greek and Roman worlds, perfumed oils accompanied body care and many everyday practices. Small containers for unguents and oils, such as the Greek aryballoi preserved in major museum collections, testify to how much these substances were part of toilette, athletics, and social life. Here too, we should resist the temptation to imagine the past as a simplified version of our present. They were not “perfumes” in the way we understand them today. They were oils, aromatic preparations, objects of use and distinction.
What is most interesting is that, from the very beginning, perfume seems to exist on two levels. On one side, the body: what is anointed, cared for, made pleasant, recognisable. On the other, space: what is purified, consecrated, made suitable for a presence.
History of perfume
This dual nature will never truly disappear. Its language will change, its techniques will change, its materials will change. But perfume will always remain suspended between intimacy and atmosphere.
Perhaps this is precisely why it still concerns us today. When we choose a fragrance for a room, an entrance hall, a living area, or our skin, we perform a gesture that is only apparently modern. In reality, we are returning to one of humanity’s oldest habits: giving air a quality, an intention, a memory.