Marketing of a Perfume From the Tomb

A Swiss businessman is betting that a scent based on what he calls the world’s oldest perfume will prove irresistible--even at $300 an ounce. But experts are sniffing at the idea.

Convinced that men and women will find romance in antiquity, Jan Baenziger plans to begin marketing the new perfume next summer. Called 1400 BC, it is modeled on a scent used by Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, who lived circa 1350 BC, according to Baenziger, president of New York-based BC Perfumes.

The financier-turned-fragrance-executive said the perfume derives from the oily contents of a blue-green glass bottle found at an Egyptian archeological site near the city of Luxor.

Such ancient bottles are not unusual, he said, but finding one that contained nearly 2 ounces of liquid was. Baenziger believes the contents were preserved by a waxy seal and a stopper, a theory that archeologists question.

No Confirming Evidence

“It’s uncommon to find (a bottle with a liquid in it),” said Kent Weeks, professor of Egyptian archeology at UC Berkeley. “I’m a little unnerved by the fact that this was purchased not excavated. Without the archeological context, it means we can’t have any confirming evidence.”

Rita Freed, director of the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archeology at Memphis (Tenn.) State University, said while it is virtually impossible to prove the oils belonged to Nefertiti, finding a 3,400-year-old perfume is possible but not likely.

“It wouldn’t surprise me that the scent had lasted,” she said. “But I remain dubious as to whether the liquid would remain. It is so hot and so dry in that climate, I would assume it would evaporate.”

According to Baenziger, the ancient bottle, with its circular middle and long, thin neck, found its way from Egypt to Basel, Switzerland, where many antique dealers buy their wares. After locating the bottle in December, 1986, New York gallery owner Keith Green contacted Baenziger, who collects antique bottles.

The bottle is Roman in design and about 2,500 years old, making it younger than the liquid, according to Green. Asked why the bottle has not been examined by glass experts, Baenziger said he is not interested in dating the bottle, only its contents.

Outbidding an American food company for the bottle, Baenziger, who declines to say how much he paid, “was the happiest man on Earth. But I didn’t know if (the perfume) was real or not,” he said. “Who knew?”

To authenticate its contents, he took the bottle to International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF), a New York-based flavor and fragrance development company.

IFF, in turn, commissioned Krueger Food Laboratories in Cambridge, Mass., to perform a carbon-14 test to determine the age of its contents.

According to company president Rae Krueger, the test showed the liquid was 3,465 years old, plus or minus 260 years. Krueger said she has dated liquids even older, mostly fossil-fuel derivatives like oil, natural gas or coal.

“No one has ever asked us to date an ancient sample of oil,” she said. “But a liquid stored in a sealed container out of heat and sunlight. . . . I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t last this long.”

Baenziger then asked IFF to identify the liquid’s components so that he and his partner, Patricia Benedict, could formulate a modern version. Three layers were found: a terra cotta-colored liquid at the top, a layer of animal fat, and a heavy yellow liquid assumed to be olive oil.

In ancient Egypt, said Baenziger, fragrance was more precious than gold and was worn only by nobility. Royalty were buried in tombs with huge vases of fragrance, as gifts to the gods, he said, and grave robbers would then fill goatskin pouches with the priceless oils for sale on the black market.

Cynthia Mussinian, a chemist and IFF’s director of research and analytical services, also had her doubts about the bottle’s contents.

Skeptical at First

“To say I was a little skeptical was an understatement,” she said. “If someone hands you a bottle with something in it and tells you it’s ancient, wouldn’t you be skeptical?”

But given the results of the carbon-14 test, Mussinian’s doubts evaporated and she was faced with what she calls the most interesting challenge of her career: reconstructing a mixture of chemical compounds that had dissipated over 3,000 years.

Using a testing instrument that vaporized and separated the compounds, Mussinian was able to identify the components of the first layer. It contained what “we would associate with fragrant materials,” she said, including traces of phenyl ethyl alcohol, which is used in many modern perfumes.

Though not known to the ancient Egyptians, phenyl ethyl alcohol is a major component of rose oil, which historians confirm was used at the time. Thus, Mussinian assumed that rose oil had been added to the mixture.

“With our knowledge of what types of materials were used at the time,” she explained, “we worked backwards to identify as many compounds as we could.”

IFF researchers also found traces of jasmine, ylang-ylang, frankincense and vanilla.

Said archeologist Weeks: “I’m no expert on the history of spices, but there is no Old World evidence for vanilla until the last 500 years, and certainly no evidence in Egypt. It seems a little hard to believe it could suddenly appear for the first time in this bottle.

“It could be another compound,” he continued. “Or there may have been something more recently added to the bottle.”

Using IFF’s analysis, perfumer Nick Calderone then “elaborated” on the ingredients, since the base itself was not particularly fragrant.

“What we found is not what the people were wearing,” he explained. (The compounds) were coming from natural sources, and we had to cross reference them with all the aromatic materials we have today.”

The result, completed last November, is an amber-gold fragrance that Calderone calls a “floral semi-oriental” and Baenziger calls “round and sensual.”

The 1400 BC bottle, lustered in 24-karat gold and shaped like a column, will be displayed in a miniature gray, stone temple with a statuette of Queen Nefertiti at the top.