November 2, 2025
Stop and smell the mummies
How Archaeology Is Reviving the Smell of History
Museums want you to smell mummies — and the internet’s nose-diving into drama
TLDR: Scientists are recreating historical scents—like ancient Egyptian embalming mixtures—to make museums more immersive. Online reactions split between excitement for smell-powered storytelling and backlash over gross-out vibes, authenticity, allergies, and ethics, turning “Eau de History” into the most divisive new museum feature in years.
Archaeologists are bottling the past, literally, with recreated aromas like Barbara Huber’s “Scent of the Afterlife,” inspired by ancient Egyptian mummification. The idea: bring museums to life by adding smell to the usual sights and sounds. The reaction online? A full-on perfume war. Some are obsessed, calling it a genius way to make history feel real. Others are clutching their nostrils, warning that the past probably smelled like sweat, smoke, and sewer—and asking, do we really want “plague-core” in 4D?
The biggest fight is over authenticity vs. theatrics. Fans say science-backed scents can unlock memory and emotion, the way smell connects straight to the brain’s “feels” center. Skeptics fire back that a lab-made whiff could easily become museum fan-fiction: a rose-tinted nose job for history. Accessibility worries sparked heated threads too: what about allergies, migraines, or scent-sensitive visitors? And the ethics crowd chimed in: is recreating funerary balms for a gift shop perfume reverent—or just creepy?
Meanwhile, the memes are relentless. “Eau de Tut” jokes, scratch‑and‑sniff sarcophagi, and “sponsored by Febreze” gags flooded replies. One minimalist commenter just dropped an archive link and walked away—peak internet drive‑by energy. Love it or loathe it, the past has never smelled so controversial—and everyone’s sniffing around for a hot take.
Key Points
- •Barbara Huber, an archaeochemist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, studies how to reconstruct scents from the past.
- •She developed “Scent of the Afterlife,” a blend representing odors associated with ancient Egyptian mummification.
- •Huber co-edited the book Scents of Arabia, showcasing recent advances in researching ancient olfactory worlds.
- •Smell is directly linked to the amygdala and hippocampus via the olfactory bulb, influencing emotion and memory and prompting rapid reactions.
- •New chemical and biomolecular methods, supported by ancient texts, now allow investigation of historical scents that were previously difficult to study.