Ancient Roman Perfume

Using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, scientists were for the first time able to figure out the source of an ingredient in an actual Ancient Roman perfume: and it was patchouli.

In 2019, archaeologists digging in the burial grounds of the once-active Roman site in Spain called Carmina discovered an oval lead case holding a glass funerary urn. The urn held the cremated remains of a woman about 40 years old (I do not know how they figured the age and gender of the dead person) and a quartz flask, stopped up with a cork made of bitumen. The millennia of darkness and the complete seal created by the bitumen cork were critical in enabling scientists to figure out the chemical composition of the perfume — it remained relatively stable for all these hundreds of years.

The deceased had to have been wealthy — owning a quartz flask was rare enough, and the material was not carved, but shaped with heat. Moreover, patchouli was imported all the way from modern India, and only rich people could have afforded it.

The perfume dates to the first century CE, which is generally the same time that the Roman Pedanio Dioscórides Anazarbeo (40-90 CE) recorded recipes for several perfumes and medicines, and Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) wrote about how these perfumes might be made. We know that there was a base made out of oils (olive oil was most popular, but almonds, horseradish, and sesame were also common), but the relative proportions of the ingredients remains an elusive mystery.