If you are a fan of fragrance history, you may be familiar with the Egyptian god Nefertem. He is the personification of the Cosmic Lotus in the Egyptian creation myth. Nefertem is the protector of dawn and patron of Egypt’s beloved blue lotuses. Nefertem rises from the river at daybreak each morning with his flowers…
Category: Lost History
Tappūtī-Bēlet-ekallim: The First Perfumer?
If you Google Tappūtī-Bēlet-ekallim, you will find dozens of articles praising her as the first perfumer. Online, Tappūtī-Bēlet-ekallim is presented as a feminist, a scientist, and an entrepreneur. Yet, those concepts would have been utterly foreign to her lived experience. Images accompanying these stories feature Babylonian goddesses, Sumerian queens, and Urukian tablets. They’re a…
The Redolent Plague Doctor?
We’ve all seen him. A dark figure, robed in black, carrying his long examining stick like a scythe. A pale beak glimpsing out from beyond his broad-brimmed hat. A carrion crow turned man. Such nightmare fuel could only spring forth from the fever dreams of a Dark Age mind, right? His beak stuffed with aromatic…
The Death/Scent Reading List
Over the last year I have had several requests for more information and deeper reads on subjects brought up on the blog. So after banging around my shelves a bit, here is the Death/Scent reading list. Some of them are staples of both olfactive and death literature, others are weird and wonderful deep cuts. This…
Disasters, Mysteries, and Perfume: Unearthing the Philistines
In this post, we explore what we know and what we don’t about Philistine culture, thier death practices and how perfume may have played a role in their cosmology.
The Lost History of Women in Chemistry: The First Alchemist
This is the second post in the D/S Women’s History Month series, The Lost History of Women in Chemistry, to see Part I: The First Perfumer click here In the Indie perfume universe, the word alchemy pops up a lot. It graces the title of several popular companies. It also tends to be the word…
The Lost History of Women in Chemistry:The First Perfumer
This post is no longer available click here to redirect to Tapputi Bellatekallim: The First Perfumer? Author’s Note: In 2016 I wrote the post, The Lost History of Women in Chemistry: The First Perfumer. In the interim, my knowledge of Assyriology and Mesopotamian olfactory history has grown, and I no longer agree with how I…
The Death Scent Project 
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