THE COSMETIC ARTS IN ANCIENT EGYPT 167 the cone of ointment placed upon his head and during the festivities from the warmth of the body it melted and ran down not only on his elaborate wig but even upon his garments. This practice must have constituted one of the courtesies of the Egyptian household, but we also see a newly ap- pointed vizier depicted on his way to the temple to be installed and he wears a cone on his head as he walks in procession ahead of the king. It has been said that this ointment would keep the wig supple and pliant, but it would seem to me that the result would be rather to undo the c.urls and braids and to create an unpleasant mess. The purpose would seem to have been the scent, and the ointment must really have been a perfume. In any case, when we see such cones on the heads of shaven headed priests, no consideration of a wig can have entered in. As another mark of the courtesy of the Egyptian host, guests at banquets, both men and women, are shown anointing their hands and limbs or having them anointed by servants. We are reminded of the scene in the New Testament when Mary, the sister of Lazarus, at a supper anointed the feet of Jesus with a jar of pure nard, and it is said that the odor of the ointment filled the house (John 12: 1-8). The ancient Egyptians were fond of scents, probably strong ones, as are their modern descendants, whether in the form of incense or for use on the body. The words "incense" and "perfume" are in origin closely related, for the first is from incendere, "to burn," and the second from perfumum, "by the smoke." Incense is known to have been used in the early dynasties, and the most common way of making of•kring to a god was by burning incense before him to purify and render the sanctuary pleasant for the food, drink and clothing offerings. Aromatic substances such as juniper oil and fragrant gums and resins of oily base were used in pure form as incense and also placed on hair, clothing and in the boxes and baskets in which wigs and clothing were kept. Slivers of sweet smelling woods were also used in the same way. However, nothing was possible for the ancients such as the modern liq- uid scents and perfumes which are solutions in alcohol. They had not learned the principle of distillation to produce the alcohol or to produce the essential scent itself. Nor did they have animal scents such as musk, ambergris, civet or beaver. Lacking alcohol the next best vehicle for ini- tially absorbing and carrying a scent is fat or oil, hence it was inevitable that the Egyptians would experiment with making the fat or oil which they used of necessity more pleasant and less objectionable when rancid. As a matter of fact, I understand that this method is made use of to the present day, that is, the extracting of scent from flowers, for example, by placing the petals in layers of solid fat or soaking them in oil as a step toward absorbing the scent in alcohol. There are, I believe, three principal ways of transferring flower or other

168 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS scents to fat or oil, and it is likely that the ancient Egyptians used them. First, there is the process of enfieurage which we have just described: the flower petals are spread in layers of animal fat or soaked in oil, and this must be done over and over before any appreciable amount of scent is ab- sorbed. Second, there is maceration, the dipping of flowers in oil at about 120øF. In each case the petals or other materials must be picked or strained out. Third is the method of pressing flowers or gum resins which have been soaked in oil by some such means as twisting the compound in a bag, tour- niquet fashion. This latter method the Egyptians used in pressing the juice from grapes. There is a statement by the Greek writer Theophrastus (4th century B.C.) that one kind of Egyptian unguent of which he had learned contained several ingredients including cinnamon and myrrh, and he says that a certain perfumer "had had Egyptian perfume in his shop for eight years **** and that it was still in good condition, in fact better than fresh per- fume." This brings to mind the fact that now and then when some dis- covery is made in Egypt, perhaps a tomb is newly opened or the first open- ing of something like the so-called solar boat trench beside the great pyramid is made, one reads in the reports that a delicate or exotic perfume issued therefrom. There is probably more imagination than fact in the statement. Fatty matter has been found in Egyptian tombs and it was no doubt once scented, but when found, scientifically inclined witnesses say, it had a strong smell, scarcely the original smell and one that cannot by any license be called perfume. To move on to another aspect of ancient Egyptian cosmetics, the one thing that perhaps sticks most in the minds of people of the west and shows up in the caricatures of the ancient Egyptians and of modern easterners is the use of eye-paint. Men and women used it in antiquity, for as we have said they believed in its antiseptic and eye-easing properties as well as its undeniable decorative values. One sees evidence of it on the statues and the sculptured reliefs. There were two traditional kinds of eye-paint: green and black. The green was the mineral malachite, a copper ore, which was finely ground. This green eye-paint is known from graves of the earliest predynastic period, but seems not to have remained very popular in later times although it does occur in offering lists of ritual texts in even the latest periods as an offering to the gods along with the black eye-paint. It was called simply "the green," and was used for the lower lid and lash only. The green eye-paint was superseded in ordinary use almost entirely by the black which was originally used only for the upper lid and lash. The black is the naturally occurring dark gray lead ore, galena, a lead sulfide. Its ancient Egyptian name, (m)sdmt, went over into Greek as stimmi and into Latin as sti•iurn. We use the latter word today as the Romans did, with its derivative