Researchers have found mummies in ancient Egypt smell "sweet" and "spicy", even after 5,000 years in a sarcophagus. Scientists at University College London have been using "human sniffers" and an "electronic nose" to improve our understanding of the mummification process. Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00We sampled two types of mummified bodies because we were interested in the smell.
00:07We did one which were in display cases and some which were in storage.
00:13The mummified bodies are still inside the sarcophagus.
00:16So what we did is we used this technique to collect the air around the mummified body inside the sarcophagus.
00:25This is a technique called headspace technology.
00:28We use a special bag and a pump to extract a volume of air that we can measure.
00:35In this case we used between 30 and 10 litres of air.
00:39The next step would be to work with a panel of trained evaluators.
00:46People who have some training in describing smells.
00:51We can all of course smell and describe smells but when we do analysis we want people to use similar words for similar smells so we can compare and measure.
01:00So we train by using similar reference.
01:04For example we would smell the same rose and say this smells floral or the same wood and say this smells woody.
01:11And then when we do analysis we're sure that we can share our experiences.
01:16So this is what we did.
01:18We smelled the different bags containing the aroma of mummified bodies and we used words to describe the quality of the smell.
01:26Could be frankincense, intensity 3.
01:31Now woody, perhaps cedar oil, intensity 2.
01:39Now it's spicy, definitely cinnamon, intensity 2, woody, spicy and floral, sweet.
02:39www.circlelineartschool.com