Egyptian Formulas for Perfume

Sure, there are some perfume classics. Think Joy or Chanel No. 5.  But nobody’s perfume formulas have withstood the rest of time like those of the Egyptians. They are carved in stone, on the walls of the tomb in Edfu. There are hundreds of lines of hieroglyphics filling the four walls of a chamber in the tomb, spelling out portions for scents and fragrant oils to offer to the gods. 

Rimming the room below the formulas are drawings of figures holding flowers and vials. I thought they were illustrations of the ingredients and how-to instructions.  

Alas, the Egyptologist told me that they were showing offerings, not demos. 

I like my interpretation better. 

Ancients Accounting for the Awful

In a dark corner, up high on a wall in the tomb of Ramses III, there is a fairly gruesome depiction. I would never have understood it without an Egyptologist to point it out and explain. As he began to lead me and my group to the area where the carvings are located, a guard scooted in front of us, arriving first to tighten the rope on the barrier. 

His message was clear.  Don’t go past the rope to get a closer look. Unless you give the guard a little bribe.  We didn’t. We could see it just fine. 

The carvings show military victory, with captive prisoners strung together in a line.

The awfulness depicted here is that the victorious soldiers chopped off the hands of the prisoners. 

Reading from left to right on the top line of prisoners. The last person on the right is bent at the waist, arm extended around a circular pile of objects. It is a pile of amputated hands. The man behind him, standing erect, is writing on a tablet, accounting, for a tally. The same story is depicted in the parallel line below; and there is a third one, too, out of the frame of the photo. 

At the top of this blog entry is a view which includes the Pharaoh on the right, seated, watching the proceedings. 

It would be hard to deny that brutality took place when history is literally carved in stone.

Pharaohs' Pyramids at Giza: But What About the Ladies?

The Three Great Pyramids (Left) and the Dumpy Pile of Rocks for the Women (Right)

Egypt’s iconic photo of Egypt is a sandy tan desert expanse punctuated by the three great pyramids at Giza.  They remind today’s world of the engineering genius and the wealth of Egypt’s ancient civilization. The pyramids were tombs for the Pharaohs, constructed to hold all their lavish provisions to accompany them on their journeys to the afterlife. 

No surprise that those three Pharaohs: Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure had wives who they expected would join them in the afterworld. 

For those wives who outlived their husbands, they got their own pyramids. But, my, my, what sorry structures for the wives of those great guys. The queens’ tombs are more like piles of rubble than pyramids. Three lumps of jumbled rocks lie off to the side. To visit the ladies, you would have to walk through camels waiting for photo ops and step over the lighting equipment for the Great Pyramids’ sound and light show. 

But, there is little to no reason to visit the wives’ world. No reconstruction.  No information. No tours. 

Apparently Ancient Egypt was a man’s world. And apparently, not much has changed. 

The Tombs of the Nobles for Regular People

After touring the tombs of Egypt’s kings and queens, I loved visiting the Tombs of the Nobles. Relatively few people visit the area.  It is an expanse of desert, containing over 400 tombs. Although "Nobles" might sound posh, the Egyptians’ Nobles were regular working guys. The tombs are modest, stockpiling only the bare necessities for the afterlife. 

My favorite was Sennofer's tomb. It is unclear how to spell his name in English. There were two signs only a few feet apart, spelling his name differently. I gave up trying to figure out how to spell it.

The ceiling of the tomb was lumpy and uneven, unlike the smooth carvings of the tombs of kings and queens. Sennofer's tomb was decorated in grape vines, following the curvy lines of the ceiling. 

Photos were forbidden. I took this one from the internet.

There was some electric lighting, but not all the way into the tomb. One of the guards, trying to be helpful, had balanced a shard of broken mirror on a rock just outside the entrance to the tomb, shooting a glare into the main corridor. He stood at the end of the light rays, holding a piece of cardboard with aluminum foil.  He aimed it up toward the ceiling. His contraption worked pretty well.

Holy Water with a Twist in Egypt

Horus, the Falcon god pours water over the king’s head. But this was not ordinary water. It was a blend of ankh, the symbol of life, and the symbol of prosperity. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have that concoction dumped over your head?

Nile, Nile, Crocodile

Egypt is all about the Nile. That fat green vertical line on the map screams obviousness that just about everything to see is on or near the Nile. In fact, some of Egypt’s most special temples can only be accessed from the Nile. 

And in the Nile is the crocodile. The Egyptians revered them. In ancient times, they mummified them. Today, they charge admission to a museum showing crocodile worship dating back to 2500 BC. And, you have to pay more for the right to take photographs. Without flash. Which means that the photos are out of focus, with glare, and basically, fairly crummy.

In the Crocodile Museum in Kom Ombo, you can see sacred crocodiles thousands of years old, and learn how the Egyptians painted their crocodiles' nails in gold and decorated their bodies with jewels.

During the Greco Roman period, roughly from 366 BC to 450 AD, the Egyptians mummified their dead crocodiles. The crocs were revered during their lifetimes and then preserved for all eternity.  When a croc died, it was placed on a bier with carrying poles. 

Before that, much longer ago, the ancient Egyptians, way back in the Old Kingdom of 2500 BC believed that the gods sent physical manifestations of themselves in the form of crocodiles. Priests worshipped Sobek, a god who was often represented as a human with a crocodile head.

 

Take a Tour of MIT -- even if you have no hope of matriculating

If you are looking for something fun to do in the Boston area, consider going to MIT as a tourist. Even if you are not a high school senior shopping for colleges, you can take a walking tour around campus and through buildings. 

The company Tradmark Tours offers several tours each day. A current MIT student (a PhD engineering candidate in our case) led my small group of visitors. Joining our group were an Israeli father and his son who is moving to Cambridge for biotech research, a Ukrainian tourist, and a Chinese exchange student and her Cape Cod-based host mother.  

The tour route wound us through research buildings, robotics labs, classrooms and social spaces, while our guide described the university’s history and operations as well as his personal experience.  

MIT showcases the whimsy of its hacker culture -- wickedly clever pranks on steroids. Plaques and exhibits pop up around campus commemorating the more notable ones. One morning in 1994, a police car appeared on top of the dome of the main building, to the amazement of all (except the pranksters). Apparently, the car got up there not by a crane, but by chopping it up and carrying little pieces one by one. The hackers climbed to the dome’s top and while there, put it back together.

We walked along a portion of the Infinite Tunnel, the spine of MIT's underground network. 

The tour wasn’t canned. We strolled by the blacksmith shop (that's technology, right?) and lots of little offices with grad students hunched over robots and other science projects. 

Optional stop to look at T-shirts. Smart ones, natch.