Q 01/05

The word 'perfume' comes from a Latin verb meaning what?

A) To sweeten

B) To anoint with oil

C) To bloom

D) To smoke through

Answer · why

D) To smoke through

Perfumery itself began in the ancient Near East, Egypt, the Indus Valley and possibly China, long before the Romans.

Q 02/05

Tapputi, one of the world's first recorded chemists, was a perfumer in which ancient civilisation?

A) Egypt

B) Mesopotamia

C) Minoan Crete

D) The Indus Valley

Answer · why

B) Mesopotamia

A cuneiform tablet from around 1200 BC records her distilling flowers, oil, calamus, myrrh and balsam in the city of Assur.

Q 03/05

On which island did archaeologists find the world's oldest surviving perfumes, over 4,000 years old, in 2003?

A) Cyprus

B) Crete

C) Sicily

D) Malta

Answer · why

A) Cyprus

The finds at Pyrgos also included a perfumery with distillation equipment.

Q 04/05

Which Persian polymath introduced extracting flower oils by distillation?

A) Al-Kindi (Alkindus)

B) Omar Khayyam

C) Ibn Sina (Avicenna)

D) Al-Razi (Rhazes)

Answer · why

C) Ibn Sina (Avicenna)

Both the raw ingredients and the distillation techniques of the Islamic world went on to shape Western perfumery and chemistry.

Q 05/05

Hungary Water, an early alcohol-based perfume made around 1370, was produced at whose behest?

A) The country's queen, Elizabeth

B) Its king, Louis the Great

C) A Franciscan monastery

D) A Venetian spice merchant

Answer · why

A) The country's queen, Elizabeth

Two centuries later Catherine de' Medici's personal perfumer, René the Florentine, carried Italian refinements to France.