Scientists sniffed ancient Egyptian mummified bodies for a new study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society It is believed to be the first to use chemical analysis and a panel of human sniffers to evaluate ancient corpses’ odors In this undated photo provided by Abdelrazek Elnaggar lecturer at the University College London take swab samples for the purpose of microbiological analysis at the Krakow University of Economics In this undated photo provided by Emma Paolin a view of a selection of the mummified bodies in the exhibition area of the Egyptian museum in Cairo sets up active air sampling with sorbent tubes and pumps a view of passive sampling using a solid phase microextraction (SPME) fiber of air within a sarcophagus In this undated photo provided by Ahmed Abdellah part of the research team at the Egyptian museum in Cairo pose for a photo with a selection of the mummified bodies it sounds repulsive: sniff the essence of an ancient corpse terrible things happen to those who smell mummified bodies,” said Cecilia Bembibre director of research at University College London’s Institute for Sustainable Heritage “We were surprised at the pleasantness of them.” “Woody,” “spicy” and “sweet” were the leading descriptions from what sounded more like a wine tasting than a mummy sniffing exercise which could be from pine and juniper resins used in embalming Scent was an important consideration in the mummification process that used oils waxes and balms to preserve the body and its spirit for the afterlife The practice was largely reserved for pharaohs and nobility and pleasant smells were associated with purity and deities while bad odors were signs of corruption and decay researchers from UCL and the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia were able to measure whether aromas were coming from the archaeological item pesticides or other products used to conserve the remains “We were quite worried that we might find notes or hints of decaying bodies which wasn’t the case,” said Matija Strlič a chemistry professor at the University of Ljubljana “We were specifically worried that there might be indications of microbial degradation which means that the environment in this museum is actually quite good in terms of preservation.” Using technical instruments to measure and quantify air molecules emitted from sarcophagi to determine the state of preservation without touching the mummies was like the Holy Grail “It tells us potentially what social class a mummy was from and and therefore reveals a lot of information about the mummified body that is relevant not just to conservators but to curators and archeologists as well,” he said “We believe that this approach is potentially of huge interest to other types of museum collections.” a postdoctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany who was not involved in the study said the findings provide crucial data on compounds that could preserve or degrade mummified remains The information could be used to better protect the ancient bodies for future generations the research also underscores a key challenge: the smells detected today are not necessarily those from the time of mummification,” Huber said and even storage conditions have significantly altered the original scent profile.” Huber authored a study two years ago that analyzed residue from a jar that had contained mummified organs of a noblewoman to identify embalming ingredients their origins and what they revealed about trade routes She then worked with a perfumer to create an interpretation of the embalming scent known as “Scent of Eternity,” for an exhibition at the Moesgaard Museum in Denmark Researchers of the current study hope to do something similar using their findings to develop “smellscapes” to artificially recreate the scents they detected and enhance the experience for future museumgoers to approach everything from a distance with your eyes,” Bembibre said “Observing the mummified bodies through a glass case reduces the experience because we don’t get to smell them We don’t get to know about the mummification process in an experiential way which is one of the ways that we understand and engage with the world.” When we see objects in museum display cases One thing that tends to get ignored or even lost in the conservation process is the smell We lose a lot of valuable information as a result such as how the object was produced or how it functioned which relates to how we engage with heritage objects with senses other than vision I develop methods to identify and preserve culturally significant smells For example, I have worked with St Paul’s Cathedral to recreate the scent of its library, to ensure that it can be experienced by future generations. I was also part of an EU-funded project called Odeuropa which worked with computer scientists and historians to tell the stories of smells from 300 years of European history With help from some perfumers, we brought back smells such as 17th-century Amsterdam, with its canals and linden trees. As a result, for example, visitors to Museum Ulm in southern Germany can experience our olfactory interpretations for ten of the paintings on display My latest project delves much further into the past I was asked by the University of Ljubljana in association with the University of Krakow and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo Ljubljana was studying a mummified body in the national museum in Slovenia and had been invited to extend its research to some mummified bodies in Cairo The strict guidelines about studying these bodies stipulate that researchers must use techniques that are not destructive One way is to see what can be learned by smelling led by Professor Matija Strlič and PhD researcher Emma Paolin We studied nine mummified bodies at the Egyptian Museum four of which were on display and five in storage with the oldest being from 3,500 years ago They were also conserved in different ways and stored in different places so they give a decent representation of all the mummified bodies in different collections around the world I put together a team of eight expert sniffers Some are specialists who have worked with me on other projects while some are colleagues from the Egyptian Museum who were given smell training in advance We wanted them on the panel because they are so familiar with the smells in question We began by doing chemical analysis to ensure the bodies were safe to smell since in prior decades they were treated with synthetic pesticides to keep them preserved Several bodies had high concentrations of these pesticides we slightly opened their sarcophaguses to insert little pipes and extract quantities of air A measured volume of this air went into special bags which we took into a room away from display areas so I and the other sniffers could experience them “nose on” More air was captured inside metal tubes containing a polymer that traps the volatile organic compounds so they could be studied in a laboratory at the University of Ljubljana This air was subjected to various chemical analyses to see which compounds were present and also separated into its constituent parts using chromatography so that we sniffers could experience and describe each smell individually This was very hard work: we usually took turns to sit on the end of a special machine with an outlet known as an olfactory port You spend 15 to 20 minutes experiencing one smell after another having to quickly describe them and rate their intensity It can be as much as one smell every second which can be overwhelming – hence the taking of turns I was more excited at the prospect of discovering something new than nervous about what it would be like to smell these ancient bodies you’d be forgiven for thinking these odours would not be agreeable From the accounts of archaeologists to movies such as The Mummy (1999) mummified bodies are associated with foul smells The sniff team’s descriptions included “woody” We were able to identify ancient embalming ingredients including conifer oils We also identified degraded animal fats used in the mummification process; the human remains themselves; and both synthetic pesticides and benign plant-based pest oils that had more recently been used by the museum for preservation Bodies in display cases had a stronger scent than those in storage, but none was as strong as, say, a perfume. Surprisingly, one smelled distinctly of black tea: when you smell a body from millennia ago, you certainly don’t expect to be transported back to your kitchen. The other sniffers agreed about the tea smell, and we later established that the source was probably a chemical called caryophyllene we will reconstruct the smell of the mummified bodies so that visitors to the Egyptian Museum can experience them first-hand We’ll make both a faithful chemical construction of what we smelled plus an interpretation of how the body would have smelled when it was sealed off in its tomb It will probably be 2026 before the public can experience these we’re also being approached by other museums with ancient Egyptian collections who are interested in working with us to apply similar methods I am working with other colleagues on developing a catalogue for smells of cultural significance to the UK our work with mummified bodies is an example of how you can bring back another dimension of heritage Experiencing smells helps to give visitors a more holistic appreciation and understanding of the subjects And everyone is fascinated by mummified bodies it will be possible to put yourself in the shoes of the archaeologists who originally discovered their tombs and revealed their secrets to the modern world This article was originally published in The Conversation on 14 February 2025 Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. The scientists were ‘surprised’ at what their noses revealed I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice Forget the horror movies – the scent of ancient Egyptian mummies is surprisingly pleasant blending scientific analysis with the power of the human nose reveals that well-preserved mummies emit a rather agreeable aroma “In films and books, terrible things happen to those who smell mummified bodies,” Cecilia Bembibre, director of research at University College London's Institute for Sustainable Heritage The research, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, involved sniffing nine mummies, some dating back 5,000 years, housed at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo participants described the scents as “woody” Researchers believed those pleasant aromas may originate from the pine and juniper resins used in the embalming process The researchers wanted to systematically study the smell of mummies because it had long been a subject of fascination for the public and researchers alike conservators and even fiction writers had devoted pages of their work to the subject — for good reason "It tells us potentially what social class a mummy was from and and therefore reveals a lot of information about the mummified body that is relevant not just to conservators but to curators and archeologists as well," he said Barbara Huber, a postdoctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany who was not involved in the study, said the findings provided crucial data on compounds that could preserve or degrade mummified remains. The information could be used to better protect the ancient bodies for future generations. “However, the research also underscores a key challenge: the smells detected today are not necessarily those from the time of mummification,” Huber said. “Over thousands of years, evaporation, oxidation, and even storage conditions have significantly altered the original scent profile.” Huber authored a study two years ago that analysed residue from a jar that had contained mummified organs of a noblewoman to identify embalming ingredients, their origins and what they revealed about trade routes. She then worked with a perfumer to create an interpretation of the embalming scent, known as “Scent of Eternity”, for an exhibition at the Moesgaard Museum in Denmark. Researchers involved in the current study hoped to do something similar, using their findings to develop “smellscapes” to artificially recreate the scents they detected and enhance the experience for future museumgoers. “Museums have been called white cubes, where you are prompted to read, to see, to approach everything from a distance with your eyes,” Bembibre said. “Observing the mummified bodies through a glass case reduces the experience because we don’t get to smell them. We don’t get to know about the mummification process in an experiential way, which is one of the ways that we understand and engage with the world.” Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies University College of London lecturer Dr Cecilia Bembibre, foreground, and Emma Paolin, a PhD researcher at University of Ljubljana, take swabs from a mummy Here’s what they smell like","description":"The scientists were ‘surprised’ at what their noses revealed Please Register or Sign in to view this content Quantum Commodity Intelligence is a premium paid subscription service for professionals in the oil Quantum Ammonia service subscribers have access to: Get in touch with us for subscription information on all Quantum platforms, or help with the service. Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. We see lots of mummies in Halloween decorations and scary movies, but real mummies are the remains of individual people, and museum scientists who work with them go beyond the scary stereotypes to give mummified individuals the respect they’re due as real people just like us. Volume 12 - 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.718287 This article is part of the Research TopicSmells, Well-being, and the Built EnvironmentView all 12 articles Olfactory heritage is an aspect of cultural heritage concerning the smells that are meaningful to a community due to their connections with significant places Knowledge in this field is produced at the intersection of history Drawing on perspectives from system dynamics an approach which focuses on how parts of a system and their relationships result in the collective behaviours of the system we will outline a series of practices relevant to this field and identify the elements as well as the connections and interactions While research in olfactory heritage is currently growing much of the knowledge that could advance our understanding of this field is still being developed within disciplinary boundaries leading to little integration of the knowledge and methods and limited interdisciplinary interpretation of findings we review the methodologies for identifying researching and preserving olfactory heritage highlighting methodological opportunities and challenges from diverse perspectives like smellscape research odour nuisance management or heritage science we review the presentation and communication of olfactory heritage in museums and other heritage spaces outlining the value of presenting scents to wide audiences for interpretation and engagement purposes we discuss challenges associated with historical scent reconstruction and discuss future directions for the field such as the potential of mining large digital collections for olfactory data Can we experience a building with our nose What’s the olfactory equivalent of a painting these questions would not have made much sense since our engagement with cultural heritage has relied heavily on visual experiences explore how olfactory aspects play an important role in the way we understand cultural heritage and therefore make sense of our past and present In this article, we will profile the study of the olfactory dimension of heritage, an emerging field of research concerning the smells that are meaningful to a community due to connections with significant places, practices, objects or traditions (Bembibre, 2021) intangible and natural heritage; and it is of interest to a variety of stakeholders The smells in this system can be textual or visual references as a mix of odorous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from an historic object they can also be fragrant solutions intended to be smelled a diverse category that encompasses perfume Representation of olfactory heritage as a system as follows: maroon: disciplines and knowledge domains; blue: competences and skills; orange: materials resources and technologies; navy: time; green: environment: purple: heritage approaches Arrows represent communication and relationship lines there is little integration of the knowledge and methods involved in these pieces of research and limited interdisciplinary interpretation of findings one of the aims of our approach is to identify those domains of interest for this field and ways in which bridges can be built to deepen the understanding of and develop shared methodologies and practices around olfactory heritage This is a larger and necessary discussion for those interested in safeguarding olfactory heritage In the process of revealing alternative historic narratives these works often provide us with new perspectives to explore and study olfactory heritage In spite of the tensions between conservation and interpretation of historic scents and the visual tradition of the heritage sector, there is a growing number of institutions which work or would like to work with smell [for some examples of exhibitions see Spence (2020b) and Deramond and Pianezza (2020)] enabling visitors to feel deep attachment to pieces of art and evoke autobiographical memories audiences are encouraged to share their experiences of the visit become a tool to develop and strengthen social bonds Odours are also important in heritage interpretation: visitors appreciate the scent of a historic library, imbuing it with symbolic meaning –“inhaling wisdom” – (Bembibre and Strlič, 2017); archives and historic house audiences value the sensory qualities of the documents they access, including the smell (Dillon et al., 2013) These issues could also be usefully explored in relation to the development of smell (re)creations and the public experiencing them the related issue of presenting original historic objects for smelling is one that requires similar investigation Fruitful connections could be made by encouraging GLAMs and archaeological sites to document the experiences of visitors in relation to olfactory exhibits, since most of the available data for the use of ambient scent on people’s responses to art has been obtained in laboratory studies and may not be directly generalisable to the museum floor (Spence, 2020a) new methods for the development of olfactory narratives would facilitate a “nose-first” approach and new interpretations of existing collections and spaces jointly with conservation organisations and industry bodies of best practices to present and communicate smells such as indoor air quality (IAQ) standards smell diffusion methods and public liability disclaimers would encourage reluctant institutions to engage in sensory work and get a clear understanding of the risks and benefits involved we’ve identified some additional directions for future work which could develop further connections and interactions between elements in the olfactory heritage system the integration of analytical work with ethnographic approaches anchored in written and visual sources when available would strengthen the process of studying smells in buildings and artefacts while encouraging discussions around complex historical and social narratives In order to effectively work with smell in GLAMs for interpretive collecting real world data would validate laboratory studies and deepen understanding Widening the debate to all stakeholders in this system would enable wider engagement with the ethical dimension of the work working with industry and heritage bodies would be beneficial to the development of best practice and safety guidelines around communicating olfactory heritage The authors conceived the present review as a reflection of historic discussions between them based on their work in the field This research was funded by EPSRC Complex Built Environment Systems (CBES) Platform Grant and by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no 101004469 The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations 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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited in accordance with accepted academic practice distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms *Correspondence: Cecilia Bembibre, Y2VjaWxpYS5iZW1iaWJyZUB1Y2wuYWMudWs= Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher 94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or goodLearn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish a team of researchers is building a repository of rare and significant smells One bottle holds the scent of the library of St Paul’s Cathedral a fragrance that evokes old books and well-worn armchairs Another contains a re-creation of the aroma of the French retreat from the Battle of Waterloo — with notes of horse mud and the cologne worn by Napoleon Bonaparte The collection is overseen by Dr Cecilia Bembibre of University College London a specialist in archiving our “olfactory heritage” cataloguing and re-creating culturally important odours — and she is hoping to capture Britain’s most meaningful smells “We want to develop an inventory of the smells that 2022 6:31 PM(Credit: skvalval/Shutterstock)NewsletterSign up for our email newsletter for the latest science newsSign Up We tend to view preservation in terms of visual and tactile material But the building blocks of culture extend to other realms of sense our reconstruction of any place or time is limited Bembibre and a handful of peers are diving nose-first into the cultural landscapes of the world in search of the aromas that have most shaped human experience From dusty bookshelves to bustling city streets they’re working out how — and why — to protect aromas from extinction Every unique smell is composed of volatile chemical compounds — minute molecules wafting through the air we inhale — that combine into a precise blend One major goal of scent research is to analyze and document these combinations Bembibre has characterized the scents of everything from furniture wax to snuff boxes and the optimal technique varies from case to case At this early stage in the field’s development “we’re exploring.” But all the different approaches serve one mission: “The question is ‘How can we experience a scent authentically once the source has disappeared?’ ” she says what is an effective way to evoke the library for the nose?” One method is called solid-phase microextraction. A few years ago, at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Bembibre exposed a sensor to the air wafting around the church’s collection of deteriorating leather-bound books from centuries past. The sensor captured the compounds that make up that cherished odor a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry machine separated all the compounds Another option begins from the human perspective Bembibre wanted to build the ancient-book scent from scratch rather than working backward from its chemical constituents She enlisted perfumist Sarah McCartney to take a whiff of some yellowed pages and then concoct her own spin on essence-of-library They then asked a group of people which sample seemed more accurate the lab’s reconstruction or McCartney’s interpretation The experiment shows that personal input is crucial in an effort to quantify subjective experience “We can try to reveal that smell outside the library.” Using DNA from bits of leaf in the Harvard herbarium’s specimens they were able to synthesize natural fragrances from Hawaii Another player in this field is the Odeuropa project The group is employing artificial intelligence to scan thousands of historical images and texts That catalog will be published online as an encyclopedia and the researchers will also use it to revive (as best they can) more than 100 scents for display in museums With tangible heritage — especially buildings and landscapes — the criteria for preservation are fairly well-defined: If it has aesthetic or historical significance Most everyone can see the wisdom in tending Claude Monet’s gardens and not bulldozing the Acropolis “we don’t have anything like that,” Bembibre says “We are developing these criteria for considering a smell culturally important.” One obvious test is simply how meaningful it is to people The perfume of the local fish market might feel indispensable to some everyone will have their own idea of what matters in the complex and ever-shifting smellscape some sort of community dialogue would inform decisions about which aromas ought to represent a place Another complication is that scents are inextricably linked to their context Christmas smells much different in wintry London than in the Argentine summer of her youth the chemical breakdown isn’t the only important factor — “the way we interpret smells changes constantly,” she says “with the cultural background and the moment we live in.” are the big questions scent researchers will have to contend with in the coming years “Smell is being taken more seriously in academia,” Bembibre says “There’s more funding for projects that are investigating smells and we know more about the sense of smell because neural scientists are looking into it.” In late 2020 the Odeuropa team received a $3.2 million dollar grant from the European Union As Bembibre has written “Our knowledge of the past is odourless.” But as she and her peers continue to elevate the odorous they are unlocking a new dimension of cultural heritage It could be that future generations will connect to the past with their noses as readily as we do now with our eyes Register or Log In Want more?Keep reading for as low as $1.99 Subscribe Save up to 40% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine When Henry David Thoreau’s pine desk arrived at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan for a special exhibition on the New England writer’s life curator Christine Nelson couldn’t resist opening one of the drawers and taking a giant whiff produced an “eau de Walden Pond” that sparked images in Nelson’s mind of Thoreau sitting at the desk and writing in one of his many journals “When I put my head in the desk and smelled this old pine I was overcome with emotion and a sense of connection to the past and this person who had such an effect on me,” Nelson says Studying the smells of history is something Nelson has recently become interested in She’s part of a team to capture the historic odors in the Morgan library to get a better grasp of the room’s history—from the ACS’s Basic Package keeps you connected with C&EN and ACS $80 Regular Members & Society Affiliates ACS’s Standard Package lets you stay up to date with C&EN ACS’s Premium Package gives you full access to C&EN and everything the ACS Community has to offer When Henry David Thoreau’s pine desk arrived at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan for a special exhibition on the New England writer’s life She’s part of a team to capture the historic odors in the Morgan library to get a better grasp of the room’s history—from the mundane act of a maid dusting the furniture to groundbreaking events Morgan himself locked a group of banking magnates in the library to save the U.S And given the symbiotic relationship between olfaction and emotion decoding what people might have smelled gives researchers a better idea of how they felt and what they thought “Smell is the holy grail of conservation science,” says Lorraine Gibson a senior lecturer in pure and applied chemistry at the University of Strathclyde odor often exists in a world of metaphor and subjectivity People describe a flooded basement as smelling like a wet dog or the scent from a new variety of coffee as having notes of currant and chocolate The problem, says Michelle Francl a computational chemist at Bryn Mawr College is that what smells of currant and chocolate to one person may be a plain cup of joe to others Part of our difficulty in describing smells is a lack of common vocabulary with which to do so Classifying smells requires a standard connection with a single odor and a word such that everyone who identifies a specific smell will use the same word to describe it Though not as precise as using a spectrometer to measure an object’s color standardizing odor vocabulary can give researchers a starting point becoming a staple of the food and flavor industry she saw this vocabulary as a tool to improve conservation science “Many conservators can smell aged paper and gather information about a book just through experience but there wasn’t a systematic program to identify Bembibre and her adviser, Matija Strlič of UCL’s Institute for Sustainable Heritage went to the library of Dean & Chapter at St They asked visitors to describe the smells that permeated the room to gather a baseline set of adjectives One hundred percent of the participants described the room as “woody,” 86% as “smoky,” 71% as “earthy,” and 41% as “vanilla.” To construct an accurate historic book odor wheel Bembibre and Strlič also needed to identify the individual chemical components of characteristic old-book smell Across the Atlantic, the Morgan’s Nelson had started working with techniques to identify odors. She had teamed up with master perfumer Carlos Benaim from the firm International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) and historic preservation scientist Jorge Otero-Pailos of Columbia University to capture some of the history of the library through the odors found within Benaim wanted to then recreate some of these odors in his lab at IFF which meant the researchers needed a precise chemical analysis of the items they selected The historical importance and value of the objects at both libraries meant the researchers couldn’t take the artifacts into the lab or collect pieces of them to study A similar problem had vexed perfumers in the past: Although they could collect objects from nature whose odors they wanted to characterize and carry them to the lab for analysis if they wanted to capture the precise scent of a certain forest or of an unpicked flower So instead of developing better ways to bring the natural world into the lab chemists helped perfumers take the lab to nature University of Waterloo chemist Janusz Pawliszyn developed solid-phase microextraction (SPME) a technique that could analyze the volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) emitted from any object Researchers cover an item with a glass jar to trap the VOCs and then capture them using a long scientists insert the paraffin-coated needle into a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer Perfumers immediately began using SPME to study scents in their natural environments without needing to bring large equipment into the field Benaim had used SPME for years and brought his expertise to the project at the Morgan subsequently analyzed the carbon sponges with GC/MS They also analyzed the captured odor molecules in what has come to be known as an olfactogram a version of a standard gas chromatogram in which the peaks are annotated with the odor of each chemical as it comes off the column The sniffers wear blindfolds to help them concentrate on scents that they describe as “vanilla” and “woody,” for instance “It’s a very intense process,” Bembibre says with each session lasting only 15 minutes to minimize fatigue Although the GC/MS can identify a chemical and correlate it with its characteristic odor in this way the technology still hasn’t surpassed the sensitivity of the human nose humans can detect smells at concentrations that don’t even register on a GC/MS especially diamines such as putrescine (tetramethylenediamine) and cadaverine (1,5-pentanediamine)—which reek of death and decay—the human nose’s sensitivity is several orders of magnitude higher than the most sensitive machines Using the olfactogram method, Bembibre and Strlič created their old-book odor wheel (Heritage Sci. 2017, DOI:10.1186/s40494-016-0114-1) The woody odors were thanks to the furfural in the decaying paper d-Limonene gave the old books the sharp tang of an orange However pleasant it might be for book lovers Nelson says that old-book smell is ultimately a sign of a book’s slow decay “There’s this wonderful romance around old books that book’s had a hard life,’ ” Nelson laughs Chemical analyses such as the ones performed by Bembibre and Strlič could provide opportunities to step in and preserve an item before its degradation passes the point of no return The wood pulp used to make the paper in many 19th-century books contains lignin which slowly breaks down into an array of acids These acids further degrade the fragile paper Analyzing the VOCs given off during this process with SPME could tip off conservators that further intervention is needed And these scientists aren’t limiting themselves to sniffing books. Old film negatives made of cellulose, vinyl records, and even early model spacesuits made by the National Aeronautics & Space Administration all degrade and decay over time Strlič has been using similar odor analysis methods to characterize these processes to identify better ways to store valuable artifacts “The VOCs from historic plastics and paper follow similar degradation pathways of organic molecules Conservation scientists have always been looking for less-destructive ways to sample an object to check its status and what’s less destructive than simply smelling it?” Strlič says this chemical analysis of odors will help researchers understand the building blocks of important historical smells possibly allowing the scientists to recreate those scents Benaim and his team at IFF have begun trying to synthesize odors captured at the Morgan library Benaim will have to combine the right chemicals in the right proportions to create a single when German scientists analyzed the aroma molecules from roasted cacao beans they found a combination of 25 key chemicals chocolate aroma suddenly resembles an old gym bag or overcooked sauerkraut Even smells that the most proletarian palates can distinguish may differ not so much in their chemical building blocks but rather in the proportions of those odor building blocks Besides the technical difficulties of assembling a large number of molecules in the proper proportions, historian Mark Smith at the University of South Carolina cautions that interpreting these odors may be more difficult still and wood smoke formed a nearly unnoticed olfactory backdrop that would likely overwhelm modern noses Even if scientists recreate this odor landscape down to the last molecule a 21st-century American will have a different experience with each inhale than a ninth-century Viking or a 17th-century Parisian What we smell today will have an entirely different meaning to what they smelled back then “You have to ask whether your act of smelling something is the same as it was for them,” Smith says The effort of interpreting historic smells “tells us more about us than it does the past.” One example of our changing odor landscapes is the famous potpourri found at Knole Recipes helped historians create an accurate reproduction that is now for sale in the house’s gift shop The combination of dried flowers from the Knole garden who aren’t accustomed to this combination of scents Despite the seeming banality of a bowl of potpourri or a pine writing desk Bembibre and Nelson say that scents like this are worth preserving because they can illuminate the past in ways that pictures and documents can’t It’s why Nelson felt compelled to sniff the drawers in Thoreau’s desk and what’s more profound than smell?” she says Carrie Arnold is a freelance science writer based in Richmond to correct the molecular “category” of putrescine and cadaverine Sign up for C&EN's must-read weekly newsletter This article has been sent to the following recipient: Copyright © 2025 American Chemical Society Cecilia Bembibre sampling the VOCs of an old book (Photo: HMahgoub/Used with Permission)  We experience our world with five senses to guide us we learn about the past with only three. We have become adept at preserving our history in audio while old recipes can communicate taste but rarely do we ever think to capture a whiff of the scents that swirl around us Luckily, there are scientists who think that stinks, and are doing something about it. Cecilia Bembibre, a doctoral candidate at University College London is attempting to preserve history like very few before her Smells “help us connect to history in a more human way,” says Bembibre, whose project combines chemistry a perfectly stuffy room full of books and pieces of furniture that are hundreds of years old.  Paul’s is opened by appointment only “It’s a wonderful library and it smells great,” says Bembibre Scent-collecting fibers set up to capture VOCs at St Paul’s Cathedral Library. (Photo: Courtesy of Cecilia Bembibre) A veritable treasure trove of historic smells, Knole House is said to contain 365 rooms The sprawling mansion has the added benefit of an extensive family archive which offers the researchers valuable historical context for the objects they are sniffing Bembibre has selected a handful of objects and atmospheres to test there leather gloves from the 1800s (“I think the gloves might have been perfumed”); a unique 1750s potpourri recipe found in the archives; the wax used to polish the furniture; the smell of the “Venetian Ambassador” room; an old book; and more modern smells like a vinyl record from the family’s collection But how do you even go about recording a smell Bembibre uses several different methods to capture a smell for study wherein an object is placed inside a clean Then an absorbent carbon fiber is inserted into the valve to soak up the ambient VOCs that have been isolated inside which involves leaving a sort of carbon sponge in a space and allowing it to just soak up the nearby smells Bembibre runs it through a gas chromatographer and mass spectrometer which she describes as a “big nose.” In the end she is left with a sort of electrocardiogram which she can use to identify the various chemicals in a smell they could look at that recipe,” she says Knole House. But what does it smell like? (Photo: Martin Stitchener/CC BY 2.0)  the smell of an old book is primarily made up of chemicals like acetic acid which smells like vinegar; furfural (“It smells sweet It’s a very pleasant book smell”); benzaldehyde (“It has a very sweet which has been likened to freshly cut grass many of which are a product of cellular decay create what we think of as the old book smell “It’s a smell that we appreciate but it’s also the smell of the books dying,” says Bembibre One of her research partners, the company Odournet works with an adapted chromatographer that allows Bembibre to actually smell each component as it is processed She says that it’s a heady experience with scents coming at you so fast that it’s hard to accurately identify them—no easy feat to begin with Because our olfactory senses are so closely tied to context identifying scents just by their chemical make-up doesn’t do us a whole lot of good “Smells are anchored in a time and a place so it’s not enough to have the chemical information for a smell,” says Bembibre. “We also need to know if people thought that smell was pleasant or unpleasant strong or weak; if it had some sort of cultural associations; if it was unique or familiar; if people thought it was worth keeping or not Cecilia Bembibre sniffs the smells of St Paul’s Cathedral Library. (Photo: Courtesy of Cecilia Bembibre) Opinion plays a significant part in the analysis though; she has smells she loves and odors she hates You find it in human sweat in a low concentration You also find it in Hershey’s chocolate “I’m always going to the States and thinking How can people like them so much?’ If you grew up celebrating with this chocolate Beyond the academic importance of smell she’s interested in sussing out “the personal associations because they’re part of why we think smell is worth keeping,” she says Bembibre currently leads “smellwalks” that bring people closer to the unique scents of their world Smells are the most visceral aspects of the human experience hopefully we can begin to preserve our own precious scents Bembibre has her own special scent memory she wishes she could preserve and we’ve just been on holiday to the beach You know the smell of skin when you come back from a day at the beach and it’s a bit salty and there’s the sun and the cream?” she asks “It was just a lazy family holiday that brought me back to my own childhood I’d love to collect that smell.”      Correction 09/21/16: Previous references to spectrometers have been changed to clarify that the instruments are actually chromatographers We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the world’s hidden wonders Consider supporting our work by becoming a member for as little as $5 a month Follow us on Twitter to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders rusks – every book has a distinctive smell And each smell says something about how and when it was made In a talk at the British Library this week the one-time protege of Jorge Luis Borges and director of the National Library of Argentina said he was particularly partial to old Penguin paperbacks which he loved for their odour of “fresh rusk biscuits” Audience members responded with their own sense impressions said he experienced books as smelling of salt and pepper – “that dryness when you open the cupboard … with a touch of the sea” while 46-year-old Donna confessed that she had recently bought a book for her young son partly because it “smelled of the rain” Cecilia Bembibre and Matija Strlič describe how they analysed samples from an old book and developed a “historic book odour wheel” which connects identifiable chemicals with people’s reactions to them they produced an “extract of historic book” which was presented to 79 visitors to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery “cocoa’” or “chocolatey” were the most frequent words used to describe the smell of a copy of French writer Bernard Gasset’s 1928 novel Les Chardons du Baragan and given that coffee and chocolate come from fermented/roasted natural lignin and cellulose-containing product they share many VOCs (volatile organic compounds) with decaying paper,” wrote the researchers who combined the results with those of earlier research projects such as studies of a 1940s visitors’ book at the National Trust’s Knole House in Kent Their study also took them beyond books themselves to the places in which many of them are read: libraries they asked visitors to the Wren Library in St Paul’s cathedral to describe what the library smelled like to them 71% as “earthy” and just under half (41%) reported the scent of “vanilla” – all smells associated with particular chemicals in old books The smell of heritage … researcher Matija Strlič with his nose in a book Photograph: SuppliedThe project originated in Strlič’s observation of the importance of smell to conservators and librarians “Librarians have told us that it’s the smell that hits readers first before people even get to the books; but what the books communicate through smell is also interesting The idea is to propose a large theoretical framework of which smells hold cultural value for us as a society,” he says “We know very well how to analyse the chemicals you need a multi-disciplinary study,” he says It wasn’t until the arrival of Bembibre – a PhD student with a background in communications – that the project began to acquire an anthropological and cultural breadth smell different to those housing more recent literature “We know that books produced before approximately 1850 have a different smell to those produced between 1850 and 1990 and that’s because late 19th- and most 20th-century printing was dominated by acid sizing” – the process to which pulp was subjected to reduce the water-absorbancy of paper The life of individual books also affects their smell: how far they have travelled; whether they have been kept in damp or dry environments “some manuscripts have hardly stirred from their original shelves since the day they were completed; others have zig-zagged across the known world in wooden chests or saddle bags swaying on the backs of horses or over the oceans in little sailing ships The medieval manuscripts De Hamel was dealing with were created by hand on long-lasting parchment made from animal skins – which also have their own distinctive smell Industrialised publishing from the mid 19th-century created less-hardy books prone to a fate that every secondhand book collector fears: “foxing” the brown blotches that appear on so many old volumes Foxing happens when small impurities left by the metal beaters used to process the paper pulp combine with fungal growth on the ageing paper Many people assume the blotches themselves give old books their familiar musty pong the smell is due to the release of chemicals such as furfural and hexanol as the paper itself decays Hexanol is often described as smelling “farmlike” or of “old clothing” or “old room” which the odour wheel consigns to a category labelled “earthy/musty/mouldy” Read moreSo what can the odour wheel tell us about Manguel’s description of Penguin books as smelling like “fresh rusk biscuits” “Biscuits is a word that often comes up when describing books Two compounds in particular: furfural (smelling of sweetness or bread) and vanillin (smelling of vanilla) could be responsible,” says Bembibre His words might indicate that the books themselves are deteriorating The gift industry has long wised up to this a few metres from the theatre where Manguel was speaking sells a candle that purports to smell of “library” “This is not just about the composition of smell itself but about human sensibility,” Bembibre says “By reconstructing the smell and assessing the human reaction to it we will be able to work out what it is that we want to preserve.” women work in the fields to gather flowers for making perfume in the traditional way as they have done for centuries (Credit: Getty Images)The smells of ordinary life are part of our culture and heritage – and many of them are in danger of being lost Imagine an old leather-bound book just pulled out from a wooden shelf Its yellowed pages release dust as they open This familiar scent is not only a simple pleasure for people who like to peruse libraries and bookshops These smells have a cultural heritage value is thrown away or kept locked behind a temperature-controlled curatorial door It is a problem that is far from unique to books – from perfumeries and pubs to entire cities the background scents of our lives are changing all the time a researcher at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage She is developing different techniques to recover “extinct” scents from the past and to preserve those around today for the future “The proposals made by cultural heritage spaces such as galleries are mostly focused on the sight,” says Bembibre “The engagement they propose tends to be visual like the objects that can be touched or smelled Bembibre is trying to rectify that neglect of scent “I wanted to address an issue that has been researched quite little – that has to do with smells as the olfactory heritage of humanity.” But how do you capture something as intangible as a historical scent One method involves exposing a polymer fibre to the odour so that the smell-causing chemical compounds in the air can stick to it Then Bembibre analyses the sample in the laboratory dissolving the compounds stuck to the fibre The resulting list of chemicals is effectively a recipe for the scent Another method separates and identifies the compounds directly from the gas sample – an approach commonly used in the perfume as it allows volatile odour-active compounds to be identified either by asking panels of people to describe certain smells “We characterise the smell from the human point of view,” adds Bembibre “This is important because if we want to preserve it for the future Not only the chemical composition but also our experience.” Bembibre has chemically extracted the smells of old leather gloves ancient books and mouldBembibre has chemically extracted the smells of old leather gloves She has reinterpreted the smells of a 1750 potpourri house recipe and of the old books housed in St Paul’s cathedral she reinterprets them from the smell’s chemical compounds until reaching the same scent were included on the intangible heritage list “There is a way of inscribing these things into world heritage lists in the same way as a world heritage site managed by Unesco So it is part of a whole intangible heritage world,” says Katy Lithgow an independent specialist in cultural heritage conservation and former head of conservators for the UK’s National Trust it is rare for a scent to be the focus of conservation in its own right a conservator might only be concerned with a scent when it is a warning sign that something is deteriorating – the smell of rotting organic matter or decay Despite the overall neglect of odours as heritage, some olfactory enthusiasts are working to preserve meaningful everyday scents before they disappear. Kate McLean, the creator of Sensory Maps is a researcher and visual artist who works “at the intersection of human-perceived smellscapes cartography and the communication of ‘eye-invisible’ sensed data” Widnes was home to soap factories and a thriving chemical manufacturing industry those factories are gone and the contemporary smellscape is quite different McLean wanted to explore Widnes’ “smelly history” as well as its contemporary smellscape McLean creates maps of towns like Widnes overlaid with data on what scents can be perceived in a specific area graphic design and smell generation and diffusion to explore the complexity of aromatic landscapes and the way we relate to them What valuable information is written into the odour of a city It runs a lot deeper than just preserving a scent for its novelty says Alex Rhys-Taylor of Goldsmiths University who specialises in the multisensory experience of urban space that you can learn a lot about a city’s economy A deep breath of not-so-fresh air in a typical Central London street might bring you a waft of an Indian curry restaurant “The smells and taste in London give you a strong sense of place and part of that is that contemporary cities reveal particular paths of migration,” says Rhys-Taylor “It generally has global roots [and] that has to do with the city’s colonial history.” while omnipresent to those living in the city “What we increasingly see is the arrival of a transnational aromascape or flavourscape,” says Rhys-Taylor “It is pretty much the same in every global city now: smell of pulled pork roasting coffee beans is an increasing one There is a global constellation of transnational aromas and flavours associated with a transnational class people that move around from city to city.” This evolution of smells is the motivation for the work of UCL’s Cecilia Bembibre Cities continuously lose their characteristic odours developing new ones is becoming crucial to their conservation Back in Bembibre’s lab, she took two routes to recreate the smell of an old library. One was a literal chemical recreation of volatile molecules found in that environment. The other one was an intuitive interpretation by perfumer Sarah McCartney Then Bembibre asked different people which smell resembled an old library the most “The truth is that the results surprised me more people chose the interpreted smell rather than the extracted one.” What Bembibre took from that was that it might not be necessary to use a mimic at the chemical level to recreate the scent of an old library “Sometimes the reproduction [by] an artist can evoke an experience with the same power.” It remains an open question whether an artist’s interpretation has more or less authenticity than a chemical mimic These are questions Bembibre aims to parse out when she creates a “smells archive” to record heritage scents that would otherwise be lost Such an archive would raise another important curatorial question: which smells should be preserved The National Trust’s former head of conservators suggests that the same criteria used for heritage sites could apply to scents “It has to do with how these smells are associated with people So the first thing is to consult with people about what sort of smells they think are valuable,” says Lithgow Determining which values are important can involve consultation with both experts and communities “I am not sure that anybody has embarked yet on a kind of review of what the world’s most significant smells are and whether they are at risk.” While it might take some time to create a smells archive Rhys-Tylor suggests that the eventual process should keep in mind a social class diversity and avoid preserving only the scents of privileged spaces “With any creation of an archive there is a big question of what is being selected,” he says “It would concern me if we were only curating or collecting the aromas of a specific social sector.” Rhys-Tylor describes the smell of a pub “full of smoke and men and beer spilled on the floor and disinfectant coming out of the toilets” “That is a very important collection in terms of the social history of the city,” he says talking about a characteristic London scent “Those types of spaces and atmospheres are perhaps more important to the city than tearooms or perfume isles.” These questions – the choice of which smells truly represent a place or culture and which are authentic – will continue to shape the archive that Bembibre dreams of she plans to continue her search for the culturally important odours that are still around today Join one million Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter or Instagram If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called “The Essential List”. 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Our sense of smell is one of our richest and wide-ranging windows into the world around us, but a threat in the air we breathe may be eroding our olfactory powers. Incident in Bembibre among a trail of similar cases at restaurants in north-western region being investigated by police They booked banquets for hundreds of guests leaving behind unpaid bills amounting to thousands of euros A trail of similar recent incidents in restaurants in north-western Spain is being investigated by police, who have detained one man from Romania, whose identity matches some of the bookings, authorities said on Tuesday. “We had just served the cake and they left just like that, without insults, without being rude to us. They got in their cars and sped out,” said Antonio Rodriguez, who was the first restaurateur to alert authorities after staff in his Carmen hotel found themselves with an unpaid bill of €2,200 euros (£1,907). The 27 February reservation in Bembibre, a town in the north-western Castile and Leon region, was to celebrate the christening of two boys with appetisers, pork chops, dessert and alcohol for 120 guests, said Rodriguez. The cake was on its way when the guests left “in a stampede,” he said. served food and alcohol in a wedding banquet valued at about €10,000 euros with the same outcome Rodriguez said a similar incident had emerged in the northern region of Galicia since he told his story to local media guests left the dining hall to set off fireworks but never returned who says he has never seen anything similar in almost four decades in the business but had little hope of recovering the remaining debt “What’s really worse is that it feels like they are pouring cold water on to you seeing them leaving and knowing that there’s nothing that you can do because these were huge men with muscles,” Rodriguez told the Associated Press the province where the first two cases were reported confirmed a suspect was arrested on Monday A second man who is on the run could have left the country already according to a spokesman with the civil guard But no further details would be released to avoid tipping the fraudsters off SEAHA student Cecilia Bembibre’s research was featured in the first episode of Channel 5 new series Secrets of the National Trust with Alan Titchmarsh Cecilia explored the heritage significance of the well-known musty one of the most highly significant properties managed by the National Trust Cecilia is researching smells that could be described as historic: old books Her research is already part of the display at the property an engaging exploration of the historic smells of Knole Cecilia Bembibre is a SEAHA alumna and was based at UCL Institute of Sustainable Heritage Her project researched the identification and documentation of heritage smells conducting VOC detection and analysis using solid-phase micro-extraction plus gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and gas chromatography Time of Flight Analysis (GC-TOF) with olfactometric detection (GC-O) Trained and untrained evaluation panels were also used to assess human perception of smells.  Find out more about Cecilia's research Research showing how heritage smells could be identified was published in a paper in the journal Heritage Science Professor of Heritage Science at UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage The research revolves around a particular heritage smell which most of us would instantly recognise: the smell of a historic library This was extensively chemically analysed and visitor experiences and emotions were recorded The information was captured in the form of a Historic Paper Odour Wheel a new tool for documenting heritage smells The research captured the imagination of the public and the media and in the BBC London News and the BBC Breakfast Show Read about the research published open access 2nd-year SEAHA student at UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage has recently completed training in chemical and sensory analysis of odours with Odournet SL industry partner in her Smell of Heritage project Working in the company’s laboratory in Barcelona Cecilia has analysed samples of historic value from National Trust’s property Knole House The combination of analytical chemistry (Time-of-Flight Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry) and the human nose (via GC-sniffing) allowed for the most sophisticated characterization of odours helping us understand the information historic smells carry and how it can impact our interpretation of the past The UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage been successful in an application to the UCL Cities partnerships Programme in Paris entitled The aura of objects: enhancing sensory awareness for curated collections in collaboration with Dr Francesco Aletta from the UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering Dr Thomas Kador from UCL Arts & Sciences and colleagues from the Osmothèque archive in Versailles/Paris Museum collections are valuable gateways to the past: by exploring them we learn about our history and heritage. Our experience of these collections is research shows that involving the intangible dimension of collections in our engagement with heritage makes the interaction more memorable enjoyable and meaningful. Heritage professionals are not usually trained in multisensory interpretation of artefacts The award from the UCL Cities Partnerships Programme in Paris will fund a workshop designed to addressing that gap raising awareness of the potential for multisensory engagement and providing useful tools to develop best practice The workshop will also explore the connection between sensory vocabularies and the London/Paris environment via a sensory walk This workshop will be led by the olfactory heritage team at the Institute for Sustainable Heritage which is has been at the forefront of interdisciplinary research on the role of smells in heritage and currently heads the olfactory heritage science tasks in the EU Horizon 2020 project Odeuropa The event will be held in collaboration with the Osmothèque the world's largest scent archive and a leading international research institution tracing the history of perfumery Their experienced team will foster the development of sensory vocabularies in the workshop participants and to lead nose-on experiences of the UCL Object-based lab collections.  Cecilia Bembibre is on a mission to save a part of our heritage that is often forgotten That delicious smell of an old book through to the scent of a person a building or even a town - she's intent on finding culturally significant smells She's doing a PhD project at the University College London Institute for Sustainable Heritage on identifying and documentation of heritage smells Bembibre tells Lynn Freeman an obvious example of a culturally significant smell is that of old books “It’s a smell that’s familiar to most of us of a certain age but physical books and libraries are disappearing from the domestic environment Not everyone has a shelf fill of physical books in their home anymore “We know that the smell of old books is one we value and attribute cultural meaning to We get some sensory pleasure and we get information for instance the state of the material of the book.” She says that when we make moves towards convenience and accessibility for instance by digitising books and archives Bembibre uses chemistry to capture the chemical compounds that give off the smell That allows her to identify the compounds responsible “The most emotional memories are invoked by smells that we perceive before the age of eight or ten years old That’s why childhood smells are so powerful to us they connect us directly to those experiences.” She says there are clear trends for generations “People born before the 1960s tend to prefer or have powerful memories associated with natural smells For a lot of people who grew up in a rural environment we have play-doh and the smell of hairspray the smell of plastic is very familiar to kids especially the warm plastic coming from computers.” the smell of the traditional Argentinian tea Mate is a powerful one “I’m originally from Argentina and I’ve been living in Europe for 20 years now See terms of use for easy access to all your favourite programmes