Mummies From Ancient Egypt Smell Surprisingly Nice, Scientists Say

What Sniffing Mummies Taught Scientists about Ancient Society

By Gayoung Lee edited by Andrea Thompson

If you were asked to describe the scent emanating from an ancient Egyptian mummy like you’d discuss a high-end perfume or the bouquet of a fine wine, you might mention fragrance notes of old linen, pine resin and citrus oils—with just a whiff of pest repellent.

These vivid comparisons stem from a new laboratory analysis of nine mummies from various social classes and historical periods. Researchers from Slovenia, England, Poland and Egypt collaborated with the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to identify more than 50 unique compounds from air samples taken around each mummy. The samples were chemically analyzed and then presented to specially trained human “sniffers,” who were asked to describe them in descriptive, sensory language such as “sour” or “spicy.” The team’s findings, recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, demonstrate how the study of smell can help to enrich our understanding of cultural artifacts such as mummies in a noninvasive way that includes local scientists.

The researchers vetted each mummy candidate carefully to obtain a wide range of smells, says study co-author Abdelrazek Elnaggar, professor of cultural heritage studies at Ain Shams University in Egypt. To collect smell samples, they inserted small tubes around each mummy (being careful not to touch the fragile remains) to siphon off gas molecules that the remains were still emitting. The team used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to identify the chemical compounds in the samples.

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A group of people, mostly museum employees, was tasked with describing the smells. Elnaggar and colleagues trained the participants to identify particular materials used in mummification that could be associated with specific smells. They also learned how to distinguish between smells coming from mummies and those that might be caused by museum infrastructure or conservation treatments.

The resulting scent profiles were complex, but the mummies were most often described by the trained sniffers as “sweet,” “woody” and “spicy.” The researchers hope that the method could be used on a larger set of mummies to better understand the varied mummification practices that occurred in ancient Egypt. “Different historical methods [of mummification] represent different materials used in mummification and also different quality of materials,” Elnaggar explains. For example, the earliest Egyptian mummies, dating back to roughly around 5000 B.C.E., formed when the remains of deceased individuals who were buried in hot, dry sand naturally mummified. Artificial mummification techniques began around 2700 B.C.E. and were the most sophisticated during the New Kingdom, which started around 1500 B.C.E. During that time, bodies received thorough treatment with a variety of oils and resins. The oldest mummies in the study were from the New Kingdom, but the researchers found that mummies from the even later Late Period (around 660 to 330 B.C.E.) did show some olfactory similarities to one another.

Additionally, it’s possible that some differences in smell may be caused by variations in mummification practices for individuals of different social classes. Across time, “individuals of high social status would be mummified with better-smelling or more intensively smelling natural extracts,” says study co-author Matija Strlič, an analytical chemist at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. For instance, he explains, the bodies of pharaohs and other elites were treated with fresh natural salts and resins derived from expensive herbs, whereas salts and other materials were reused multiple times for the bodies of people from poorer classes. In the study, the most well-preserved mummy was in a coffin with a gilded mask, and even though it was one of the oldest, it had a wide variety of odor compounds that were often found in higher concentrations than in the other mummies.

Using local conservators was a key part of this study, Elnaggar says, as they have a stake as caretakers of Egyptian cultural heritage and are exposed to the smell of artifacts in their work. In many ways, he says, this makes them well prepared to describe mummy scents for both researchers and casual museum visitors.

“Smell is very closely linked to the area in our brain—the amygdala and hippocampus—which is responsible for processing memory and emotions,” says Barbara Huber, an archaeochemist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany, who was not involved in the new study but curated a 2023 exhibit on mummy scents in Denmark. “Very often you see this glass [blocking] objects inside, and stories about the past are missing.” Thus, in some ways, commonly used museum display methods betray how critical smell can be to our understanding of historical narratives, Huber says, especially for “an incredibly aromatic experience,” such as mummification. “In order to truly experience cultural heritage, we need to involve all our senses—because smells and sounds of heritage are inherent” in getting a full experience of the past, Strlič says.

Can we expect to grab a bottle of mummy perfume from the museum shop soon? The researchers say this might not be off the table. “Everyone would like to smell like ancient Egyptians: sweet, woody and spicy,” Elnaggar jokes. “What we’d like to do now is to share our experience with museum visitors so they can enjoy it in exhibition—and even take it home!”