T rex breath and Queen Elizabeth’s car: scientists creating ‘time machine for the nose’

T rex breath and Queen Elizabeth’s car: scientists creating ‘time machine for the nose’ Researchers are recreating ancient odours for museumgoers as interest in the archaeology of smell grows From the interior of Queen Elizabeth II’s car to the scent of ancient Egyptian funerary practices, museumgoers are getting a whiff of the past like never before. Experts say the approach is more than a pungent stunt: it’s part of a broader effort to try to reconstruct the sensory worlds of the past, with collaborations involving historians, scientists, heritage experts and perfumers. “Over the past decade or so there’s been a growing interest in the ‘archaeology of the senses’, including the archaeology of smell,” said Dr Barbara Huber, an archaeochemist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany. “Researchers began asking not just what objects looked like but what past environments felt, sounded and smelled like.” Huber worked on the creation of small cards infused with a perfume based on ingredients identified in residues of ancient Egyptian mummification balms , which formed part of a project called Scent of the Afterlife. She described it as a “time machine for the nose”. It has an aroma rich and warming with honey-like notes and a hint of earthy spices – but not entirely pleasant. In order to create the scents, Huber and colleagues carried out a chemical analysis of the residues of balms within ancient Egyptian canopic jars, dating back to 1450BC, to identify a complex mix of aromatic ingredients. Among these were beeswax, resins from trees of the pine family, and a substance called coumarin, a crystalline chemical compound with a vanilla-like scent. The researchers then worked with a perfumer to recreate the aroma. “Since the materials identified in the chemical analysis of the original balm dated to antiquity, modern olfactory equivalents had to be identified that were both safe for public use and faithful to the biomolecular results,” the team reported. T...