Perfume making goes back at least 3,000 years – to the time of Tapputi-belat-ekalle, who is considered the first chemist in history. What we know about her comes from inscriptions on fragments of clay tablets dating to the Middle Assyrian period (1400–1000 BC).
The inscriptions tell us that Tapputi was in charge of “overseeing the palace” as leader of a collective of female expert perfume makers in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Iran). This muraqqitu, experts in aromatics, prepared fragrances for the king and his royal family. The inscriptions, which are on display at the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, also show a detailed procedure for how Tapputi produced one of her perfumes. Tapputi and her team used aromatic and medicinal plants and flowers, commonly found at the time, to extract essential oils and fragrances.
Perfumes can be floral, fruity, sweet, spicy, woody and much more. These attributes, or ‘notes’, are what we are drawn to when choosing one to wear. The various chemical molecules that make up the perfume notes are known as volatile compounds. These are compounds that evaporate easily. When these molecules become a gas, they are detected by the senses in your nose.
Behind the sensations we get from our favorite perfume lies an advanced process in which art and chemistry are closely intertwined.
Tapputi’s recipe describes a series of techniques to extract and concentrate volatile odor compounds that still form the basis for various chemical applications, such as the production of perfumes, cosmetics, medicines or supplements.
Some of these extraction techniques include heating. For example, to prepare a decoction (extracting water-soluble substances from plants), the raw material, such as leaves or roots, is boiled for an extended period of time with a solvent such as water. The infusion technique was also described. The material to be extracted is briefly soaked in hot water, just like with tea.
Other techniques rely on the extraction power of the solvent in which the raw material is soaked for a long time at room temperature – a process called maceration.
Tapputi’s recipe also illustrated a sequence of heating and cooling of the raw material, in a process similar to what we would today call distillation. This method uses evaporation and condensation to separate the different volatile odorants. This conversion from liquid to gaseous state, and vice versa, is based on how easily and at what temperature the compounds evaporate.
Finally, multiple refinement steps via filtration were carried out to obtain perfumes that were ‘fit for a king’.
These same techniques are still relevant in modern perfumery, but have been optimized over the centuries and are now more efficient.
Are all noses the same?
If Tapputi had been born in modern times, she might have been a “nose,” the term for highly skilled scent artists, mastering chemistry and creativity. Just like in nature, many perfumes combine a large number of scent compounds. Making a perfume means assessing the interaction of many volatiles in a mixture and their stability, alone and together, after bottling.
These highly trained professionals can easily distinguish between notes with subtle differences and recreate them in their lab.
The expertise of gifted noses also finds application in sensory analysis in the food, beverage and cosmetics industries, where they study how a product feels through their five senses.
In the laboratory, chemists often rely on sophisticated instruments to understand the origins of the aroma of natural products. These instruments scan the complex odor to separate and identify the hundreds of volatile molecules that, when combined, give the overall scent that our noses can smell.
For example, in our recent research we screened the scent of some Irish honey samples, marketed as heather honey, to gain further insight into their botanical origins. The volatile substances found in honey mainly come from the plants and flowers that the honey bees visited to collect the nectar that, through many processes, is converted into honey. We found that all samples contained aroma notes from different plants.
A new frontier in aroma research lies in the development of “e-noses”. These are electronic devices that detect molecules and mimic how our noses detect volatile compounds, creating a ‘fingerprint’, a screening of a sample’s characteristic aroma compounds. These e-noses can also be important for other industries. For example, in the diagnosis of diseases (fingerprints of volatile molecules can change with blood sugar levels) and for quality control for the food industry, where the volatile fingerprint of food can change as it spoils.
Modern perfume research also explores the important, but often overlooked, psychology of scent. They have a very suggestive power over people. We’re starting to understand why certain scents make you want to have a cup of tea, put your nose in a book, or feel festive.
This seems to depend on the physical connection between our sense of smell and the parts of our brain associated with memories and emotions.
This could explain why scents in Tapputi’s time were not only seen as cosmetics, but also had a religious function. They were used as part of rituals and ceremonies and offered to the gods to bridge an invisible connection with them.
If reading this has made you curious about perfumes, you can try making a perfume inspired by the scent of Tapputi.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Roberta Angioi, PhD has previously received funding from the Irish Research Council (IRC-GOIPG/2019/4385). She receives funding from Science Foundation Ireland (Insight) at the time of publishing this article.