Latest trend in scents: 3,400-year-old Pharaoh's perfume
The latest thing in scents next year could be the oldest perfume in the world, made especially for an Ancient Egyptian female pharaoh, according to German scientists who are analyzing residue found in a 3,400-year-old perfume flacon. The German researchers at the Bonn University Egyptian Museum say they will use the analysis to recreate the original perfume which was buried in an exquisite alabaster vessel bearing the royal insignia of Hatshepsut, the most powerful woman ever to rule Egypt before the Ptolemies and the Romans conquered it. The intact perfume jar has remained sealed since it was interred in the Valley of the Kings 1,400 years before Cleopatra. On a hunch, the Bonn Egyptologists recently ran a CAT scan which revealed 3-D images of a residue at the bottom. "No one had ever done that before," says museum curator Michael Hoeveler-Mueller. "We were frankly overjoyed at the findings. And now we are conducting a chemical analysis of the residue in hopes of b