Tappūtī-Bēlet-ekallim, The Oldest Perfumer on Record
What we know of the first perfumer in the historical record comes from one tablet that was housed alongside other chemical texts in the ancient library of Aššur. It is written in Middle Assyrian and currently resides in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin.
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"If you Google who the first perfumer in history was, you will find Tappūtī-Bēlet-ekallim; most likely, her name will be shortened to Tapputi. Online sources cast her as a proto-girl-boss, a kind of corporate feminist before the conception of capitalism. However, today let’s dig past the hype to look at the source material and see Tappūtī-Bēlet-ekallim not as the patron saint of corporate perfumery, but as one of many Assyrian workers who helped develop the bedrock of olfactory culture."
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The results of a study show that scribes did not always refine their clay, barely used fire to harden the texts, and that tablets made in the workshop coexisted with others brought from outside.
