Nicole Boivin and Barbara Huber

In 1900 – some 22 years before he discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen – British archaeologist Howard Carter opened another tomb in the Valley of the Kings. In tomb KV42, Carter found the remains of a noblewoman called Senetnay, who died around 1450 BCE.

More than a century later, a French perfumer has recreated one of the scents used in Senetnay’s mummification. And the link between these two events is our research, published today in Scientific Reports, which delves into the ingredients of this ancient Egyptian balm recipe.

Recreating the smells of a disappeared world

Our team drew upon cutting-edge technologies in chemistry to reconstruct ancient scents from jars of Senetnay found in the tomb.

We used three variations of chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques, which work by breaking samples down into individual molecules. Specific substances have different assemblages of molecules. Based on these characteristic