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Top Comments: What Did Ancient Roman Perfume Smell Like? [1]
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Date: 2023-06-11
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The cultures of ancient civilizations come to us through the writings that may survive, as well as the various artifacts found and identified in archaeological excavations. It is natural for us to be curious about the ways that the ancients lived, as we wonder how their lives were both the same and different from ours. While some elements of their culture were very different from those of the modern world (for example, religious beliefs), they were still humans who needed food, sleep and shelter, just as we do. So it’s comforting in some way to discover, for example, a fast-food restaurant unearthed in Pompei.
In 2019, the quartz perfume vial shown above was discovered in the Spanish city of Carmona, which was an important Roman settlement in ancient times. It was found in an urn containing the cremated remains of a woman who died around the age of 40, about 2000 years ago. Quartz bottles were expensive, at quartz is a difficult material to shape into a pretty flask, so it’s likely that this woman was from a family with wealth.
There was actual perfume in the vial, but there was no detectable scent. Determination of the vial’s contents had to be done through chemical analysis, specifically gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometric detection. So what was in the bottle? Patchouli and vegetable oil. While ancient perfume recipes have been found, mostly with vague directions, this is the first perfume vial that has yielded to analysis such that we actually know what was in it. Of course, patchouli is still a common ingredient in present-day perfume, again suggesting that, at least as far as scents go, tastes haven’t changed that much.
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