Scents of Mummification and Ancient Egyptian Afterlife is the title of an online workshop scheduled for August 2, 2020, via Zoom. The workshop’s instructor is Dora Goldsmith (Ph.D. student of Egyptology, Freie Universität Berlin).
Scents of Mummification as a workshop topic
The workshop will take three hours. In the first hour, Ms. Goldsmith will give a lecture on the fragrant substances used during the process of mummification. Attendees will learn about the smells that defined the mummification chambers and tombs, and the scents that the ancient Egyptians themselves wished to be surrounded by in their life after death. There will also be a discussion about the scent of coffins and mummy garlands and their religious significance. In the second hour, the instructor will give a detailed insight into the ingredients, to be presented on slate plates. The third hour will be reserved for Q&A.
Practical details
Time and Date: Sunday, August 2, 2020, 6pm-9pm CEST (starting at UK: 5pm, US East coast: 12pm, US West coast: 9am, Australia: 2am).
Ticket fee: 30€
To sign up, send an e-mail to [email protected]
For visual impressions of some of the fragrant substances to be discussed click here.
About the instructor
Dora Goldsmith is a Ph.D. student of Egyptology at the Freie Universität Berlin. The topic of her project is the sense of smell in ancient Egypt, the exact title of her research being *“The Archaeology of Smell in Ancient Egypt. A Cultural Anthropological Study Based on Written Sources”*. The project incorporates linguistic and cultural anthropological research, including semantic field research focusing on ten different words relevant to the sense of smell, which Goldsmith records, while translating all ancient Egyptian texts where these are found, with the view to defining the role of smells in the ancient Egyptian society.
