The researchers' description of the mummies' scent resembles more a wine tasting than a mummy sniffing: "woody", "spicy" and "sweet" were the main assessments.
Floral notes were also detected, which according to the researchers may originate from pine and juniper resin used in the embalming process.
In films and books, terrible things happen to those who sniff mummified bodies, says Cecilia Bembibre at University College London and adds:
We were surprised by how pleasant they (the mummies) were.
In the study, published in The Journal of the American Chemical Society on Thursday, both chemical analysis and a panel of human sniffers were used to evaluate the scents from nine 5,000-year-old mummies. The mummies had previously been stored in Cairo.
The surprisingly pleasant scents are believed to be due to the oils, wax, and balm used to preserve the bodies and their souls for the afterlife, according to the researchers.
