Fragrances have served the most varied functions, including purification and mummification. European industry grew from various empires, trade and colonialism.
The word “perfume” has a meaning that few today would dispute: a fragrant liquid in a bottle, usually sophisticated in appearance. But the name itself, derived from the Latin “per fumum” — which means “through smoke” — indicates that what we understand today as perfumery differs enormously from its origin and its uses in the past.
In fact, the history of perfumes has seen scientific advances, knowledge transfer, commercial expansion, colonialism, natural resource extraction and, more recently, Eurocentric marketing.
Chinese, Hindus, Egyptians, Israelites, Carthaginians, Arabs, Greeks and Romans were already familiar with perfumery. There are references to perfume and its use in both the Bible and the Hadith, the sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad.
Just as no single perfume can capture all of the world’s scents, no narrative can encompass its diverse stories. “That’s what I love about perfume: a very small gesture on the skin with a Huge, layered story from behind,” perfumer and historian Alexandre Helwani tells DW.
A story as old as time
Primitive perfumery, which dates back more than 4 thousand years in ancient Mesopotamia, it involved burning aromatic substances such as frankincense and myrrh. The rising smoke was believed to bridge the gap between earth and the divine.
In fact, the first recorded “nose” — that is, highly qualified master perfumer — was a woman called Tapputia chemist whose work in Mesopotamia was documented on a cuneiform tablet dated to around 1200 BC
“Tapputi was a muraqqitu, a distinct professional category of perfumers linked to the Assyrian and Babylonian courts. Its importance was in ensuring that women occupied a role of high ‘perfume’ status in the royal courts”, says Helwani.
Archaeochemist Barbara Huber, whose work focuses on the relationships between humans and plants throughout history, further explains that “perfume” came to encompass, over time, a wide range of aromatic materials and practices: burning incense and aromatic woods, perfumed oils, balms, ointments and even cosmetics.
“Many of these products were used not only for personal adornment, but for rituals, offerings to deities, purification or healing. The boundaries between perfume, medicine and cosmetics were often blurred,” he says.
In Ancient Egypt, aromatic oils and resins were central to rituals and mummification. In India, sandalwood paste was applied to the skin, jasmine was drawn into the hair, and saffron was incorporated into clothing — a layered sensorial 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 was transformed in the Arab world into liquid distillations during the Islamic Golden Age. In the 9th century in Baghdad, the polymath Al-Kindi wrote The Book of Perfume and Distillation Chemistrythe 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 fragrance industry were then established.
These advances would reach Europe through different routes. The regions of the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim rule between the 13th and 14th centuries served as an academic bridgewhere scholars translated Arabic texts into Latin.
At the same time, Mediterranean trade brought rosewater 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. You Romans had baths and scented oilsand 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 “bad air” believed to cause the Black Death. Louis XIV, of France, had his favorite orange blossom water gushing from the fountains at the Palace of Versailles.
The advanced techniques and rich ingredients of the Arab world, however, reignited and transformed European perfumery, which began to use alcohol as a base to create lighter and longer-lasting perfumes.
“Water of colonialism”
With European perfumery flourishing, especially in France, colonial expansion provided the ingredients to sustain the nascent industry.
A striking example is the 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 Albiusa boy enslaved on Reunion Island (formerly Bourbon), who at the age of 12, in 1841, discovered the practical method for manually pollinating vanilla orchids.
“If it weren’t for him, vanilla would have remained a rarity. In a world of patented technologies, I’ve always wondered how much of a billionaire Edmond Albius would have been if he hadn’t been enslaved,” notes Helwani. “When we talk about the ‘history of perfume’, we are simultaneously talking about the history of empirescommerce and colonialism.”
Over time, European perfume houses became central to branding and marketing, cementing the association between refinement and European aesthetics. “Although the fundamental ingredients come from diverse global regions with rich historical traditions of aromatic use, the presentation and marketing narratives tend to be Eurocentric”says Huber.
Some European houses that classify fragrances as “oriental” have attracted criticism. “The ‘Orient’ attempts to encapsulate a vast region (…) where many perfumery practices and raw materials originated,” says an online petition on the topic. “The consistent use of the term to evoke the exotic and fragrant erases imperialism and Islamophobia that continue to destabilize these areas of the world today.”
Since the 2000s, marketing has replaced “oriental” with “amber” to describe warm fragrances.
