Scientists re-created the scent of a mummy buried more than 3,500 years ago, and it smelled far better than people might imagine.
When ancient Egyptians preserved the bodies of important people, they removed their organs and put them in clay urns. Many of those urns have been discovered in tombs in Egypt.
A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany studied two urns from about 1450 BCE that once held the preserved organs of a woman named Senetnay. She was a noblewoman who helped raise King Amenhotep II when he was an infant. Though the organs were gone, the urns contained the residue of different balms (pleasant-smelling ointments) that were used during the mummification process.
The scientists closely examined the chemical makeup of the balms using a…
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The Week Junior US (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 183