Perfumes have performed the most diverse functions, including purification and mummification. European industry grew out of various empires, trade and colonialism. The word “perfume” has a meaning that few people would dispute today: a fragrant liquid in a bottle, usually sophisticated in appearance. But the name itself, derived from the Latin “per fumum” — meaning “by smoke” — indicates that what we understand by perfumery today differs greatly from its origin and past uses.
In fact, the history of perfumes has been marked by scientific advances, knowledge transfers, commercial expansion, colonialism, natural resource extraction and, more recently, Eurocentric marketing.
The Chinese, Hindus, Egyptians, Israelites, Carthaginians, Arabs, Greeks and Romans already knew perfumery. There are references to perfume and its use in the Bible and in the Hadiths, the words and actions of the Prophet Muhammad.
Just as no single perfume can capture all the scents of the world, no single narrative can encompass its diverse stories. “That’s what I love about perfume: a tiny gesture on the skin with a huge, complex story behind it,” perfumer and historian Alexandre Helwani tells DW.
A story as old as time
Ancient perfumery, dating back over 4,000 years to ancient Mesopotamia, involved burning aromatic substances such as frankincense and myrrh. The rising smoke was believed to bridge the gap between the earth and the divine.
In fact, the first recorded “nose,” that is, a highly skilled master perfumer, was a woman named Tapputi, a chemist whose work in Mesopotamia was documented on a cuneiform tablet dating to around 1200 BC.
“Tapputi was a muraqqitu, a distinct professional category of perfumers linked to the Assyrian and Babylonian courts. Its importance was to ensure that women occupied a high ‘perfumer’ role in the royal courts,” explains Helwani.
Archaeochemist Barbara Huber, whose work focuses on the relationships between humans and plants throughout history, further explains that “perfume” has come to encompass, over time, a wide range of aromatic materials and practices: burning incense and aromatic woods, fragrant oils, balms, ointments, and even cosmetics.
“Many of these products were used not only for personal adornment, but also for rituals, offerings to deities, purifications or healings. The boundaries between perfume, medicine and cosmetics were often blurred,” he explains.
In ancient Egypt, aromatic oils and resins were central to rituals and mummification. In India, sandalwood paste was applied to the skin, jasmine was applied to the hair, and saffron was incorporated into clothing – a layered sensory practice that sanctified the body itself.
Recent research has even revealed that Greco-Roman sculptures of gods and goddesses were “perfumed” with aromatic substances to appear more vivid.
From smoke to distillation
What began as incense and balms evolved in the Arab world into liquid distillations during the Islamic Golden Age. In Baghdad in the 9th century, the mathematician Al-Kindi wrote The Book of the Chemistry of Perfume and Distillations, the first comprehensive manual on perfumery.
A century later, the Persian Ibn Sina (known in the West as Avicenna) perfected steam distillation to extract essential oils from flowers, especially roses, creating a model for later perfumers. Many of the fundamental techniques that underpin the modern perfume industry were then established.
These advances would reach Europe by different routes. The areas of the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim rule between the 13th and 14th centuries served as an academic beachhead, where scholars translated Arabic texts into Latin.
At the same time, Mediterranean trade brought rose water and spices to ports like Venice and Genoa, while the Crusades exposed Europeans to Arab medical and aromatic practices.
But Europe was no stranger to perfumery. The Romans had baths and scented oils, and medieval nobles used herbs, pomanders, and incense.
In the Middle Ages, perfume served practical and symbolic needs: doctors filled their beak-shaped masks with herbs to filter out the “bad air” that they believed caused the Black Death. Louis XIV of France spouted his favorite orange blossom water from the fountains of the Palace of Versailles.
The advanced techniques and rich ingredients of the Arab world, however, revived and transformed European perfumery, which began to use alcohol as a base to create lighter, longer-lasting fragrances.
“The water of colonialism”
While European perfumery flourished, particularly in France, colonial expansion provided the necessary ingredients to support the fledgling industry.
A striking example is vanilla. Brought to Europe by the Spanish in the 16th century, it became an important colonial crop in the Indian Ocean. Helwani cites the story of Edmond Albius, a slave boy from the island of Reunion (formerly Bourbon), who, at the age of 12 in 1841, discovered the practical method of hand-pollinating vanilla orchids.
“Without him, vanilla would have remained rare. In a world of patented technologies, I always wondered to what extent Edmond Albius would have been a billionaire if he had not been reduced to slavery,” notes Helwani. “When we talk about the “history of perfume”, we are simultaneously talking about the history of empires, trade and colonialism.”
Over time, European perfume houses became central to branding and marketing, reinforcing the association between refinement and European aesthetics. “Even though the fundamental ingredients come from various regions of the world with rich historical traditions in the use of flavors, the presentation and marketing narratives tend to be Eurocentric,” says Huber.
Some European houses that describe perfumes as “oriental” have attracted criticism. “The Orient attempts to encapsulate a vast region (…) from which many perfumery practices and raw materials come,” states an online petition on the subject. “The constant use of the term to evoke exoticism and perfume erases the imperialism and Islamophobia that continue to destabilize these regions of the world today.”
Since the 2000s, marketing has replaced “oriental” with “amber” to describe warm fragrances.
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