Page 40 - feb21

perfumery in Africa

Egypt and Sudan - famed and sacred
You can still find many artisanal perfumes
made in Egypt, but perhaps the most
famous is the Balsam of Matariyya or Balm
of Gilead, known since medieval times as
deriving from a plant thought to grow only in
Ain Shams in Cairo.
Frankincense (Boswellia tree resin), and
Myrrh (Commiphora tree resin) two sacred
ingredients used in perfumery come from this
region. While Bint-El-Sudan was until recently
the best-selling perfume in the world. The
story goes that a band of men crowded into
the office of W.J. Bush & Co in Khartoum.
They produced a number of vials of exotic
fragrance materials. Their desire was to have
them made into a perfume. Eric Burgess took
these vials back to London where the famous
fragrance ‘Chanel no. 5 Africa’ was born, and
is still being used in Sudan today..
South Africa and Namibia -

Buchu, Bushman’s candle, & Omumbiri
In our part of the world, plants are usually
burnt like incense for magical or medicinal
reasons. The word perfume is derived from
the Latin word, “per fumus”, meaning through
smoke. Having documented evidence of this
in the San culture, Southern Africa is quite
possibly the birthplace of perfumery. Sarcocaulon
crassicaule (known as Bushman’s candle) an
example of an indigenous incense, contains
such a large quantity of resin and wax that it
burns like a torch emitting an amber-like scent.
The Himba in Namibia use Omumbiri, a resin
obtained from Commiphora wildii to make both
a powdered perfume and one mixed with
butterfat. Famous perfumes like Calvin Klein’s
CK Free, contain plant ingredients from
indigenous Artemisia, and Agathosma betulina,
Buchu, a Cape Fynbos endemic.