Prague-based Sean Coughlin presents research during a five-year attempt to reconstruct five ancient Greco-Egyptian perfumes from Greek, Latin and Egyptian recipes, combining textual scholarship, experimental methods, and analytical chemistry. For this session, Coughlin will review and explain what his team set out to do, the methods they built (and threw out), and what they learned about how ancient perfumes were made. Expect myrrh, cinnamon, galbanum, lily, smoke—and a few honest failures.

The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session with attendees.

Olfactory Research Notes is a lecture series presented by the Institute for Art and Olfaction that highlights important research done in the field of olfaction, directly from the scientists, researchers, academics, and artists who do it.

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Image credits: Wikimedia Commons