Find Perfumes and Colognes: Origin


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Origin - by W.G.

Ancient westerns always had a great predilection for fragrances, perfumes, and scents. They had an important commerce around aromatic species.

Egyptians consumed a lot of perfumes in cults to Gods and in the mummification process. Most of the products came from Arabia, Western Palestine, and Saba.

In times of Salomon, perfumes became popular among the people of Israel. The King received it as a gift from the Queen of Saba. Then Salomon offered them to the Babylonian King and other monarchs. In that way, fragrances acquired a commercial importance such as gold, silver and weapons.

Many religions had their liturgical perfumes; Mosses for example, used a blend with myrrh, cinnamon, cane, cassia, and olive oil. Most of these where burnt in altars and were considered sacred and prohibited for personal use. Palestinians enriched the formulas adding more components, like saffron and Jordanian amber.

With time, some compositions were included in sacred book. And so, people and families that exclusively dedicated to the art of perfume elaboration appeared. In private life, the use of perfumes was particularly important for women in the harem: for example; they sometimes received treatments based on different scents with durations of several months.

Phoenicians bought fragrances to Greece and factories with Syrian workers were established in Corinthian, Cyprus and other places. And soon, other substances like almond oil, roses and other vegetal elements were added.

Like many other things, Romans appreciated original Greek formulas and tried to make new ones. In the elaboration they distinguished two parts: the volatile part or "sucus"; and the excipient part or "corpus" (usually an oil from fruits or walnuts). Plino, for example wrote about the commercial value and imitation of perfumes in the Roman Empire.

After the end of Empire, the importance of perfumes was reborn in Spain due to its Roman heritage and Arabian influences. The use spread out mainly to France and Italy. By that time, the commerce of perfumes was tied to the manufacturing and commerce of gloves (as a matter of fact, some times, the trade of perfumes was an exclusivity of 'perfumed gloves' merchants). At the end of the XVII century, a business branch was known as "glove masters and perfumists".

In the XVII and XVIII centuries, new Bouquet and Eau de Cologne became famous. And since the XIX century the perfume industry has gradually reached more people geographically an socially. The use of new natural and synthetic elements also led to the creation of new fragrances, colognes, and perfumes.