A little bit of beautiful history…
2006-11-13 16:19
People, who think that cosmetics are the discovery of our time are totally wrong. They did use makeup preparations and sometimes quite radically.
The alteration of appearance through the use of cosmetics has been a practice for thousands of years. Oils and fragrances have been used for ceremonies and religious rites for just as long. In Ancient Egypt aristocrats applied minerals to their faces to provide color and definition of features. The Greeks were also known to paint their faces and the Romans used oil-based perfumes in baths and fountains, and even applied them to their weapons. The Roman Lucian is noted to have talked about women and cosmetics in his time, referring to their polishing their teeth and eyebrows.
Alcohol-based perfumes were developed in the Middle East and were brought to Europe by the Crusaders in the thirteenth century. The art of creating new fragrances by blending ingredients was developed in France in the seventeenth century. Natural perfumes were made from ingredients like flowers, roots, fruits, rinds or barks, or any other naturally occurring aroma containing product.
The Roman historian Pliny, author of the impressive 1st-century AD Natural History, says Carthage was built around fragrance trade and Phoenicians were particularly famous for they knowledge and expertise in perfumes and incenses. The ancient Greek world was also rich in fragrance. All Greek cities-states had hundreds of perfumers shops set up in them. Trade was heavy in fragrant herbs such as marjoram, lily, thyme, sage, anise, rose and iris, infused into olive, almond, castor and linseed oils to make thick unguents. At the same time in Indus Valley another great civilization, some say even older than Egyptian, left undisputed evidence of perfume use by its people. In Vedic texts, like Rig Veda, Mahabharata and Ramayana originated around 10, 000BC it is common for gods and humans alike to rub themselves with scented oils and burn incense for a "pleasant smell”.
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