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 In
the 10th century BC, Media, situated beside the
Caspian Sea in western Asia, occupied modern Azerbaijan, Kurdistan
and some of Kermanshah in northwestern Iran. A mixture of
both the refined civilization of Chaldea and the more barbaric
one of Parthia, the Medes had a taste for luxury and military
conquests along with the Assyrians, with whom they fought
long and bloody wars, being by turns both victors and vanquished.
When King Astyage died in 550 BC, the dynasty of the Medan
kings came to an abrupt end with the arrival of the Persian
king, Cyrus II the Great. From then on, the Medeo-Persian
Empire was united until its destruction by Alexander the Great.
During this period of the Medeo-Persian Empire, the Medes,
who up until then had been fierce warriors, started to act
like their Persian masters, imitating their habits and customs.
And therefore it’s natural that we include them in our
study of perfume. As soon as the Persian dynasty was sufficiently
established, its people indulged in fabulous luxury which
can only be compared to the sumptuousness of Byzantium during
the reign of Empress Theodora.
The refinement of the Medes and Persians
pushed them always to look for new ways to use perfumes, despite
certain historical accounts which have suggested that they
only used it to hide the smells resulting from their table
excesses and a lack of hygiene. According to Herodote, the
king of the Persians only washed his hair once a year, on
his birthday. Without disagreeing with this great Greek historian,
one must not forget the refinement of the monarchs of the
Orient who used scented waters and aromatic lotions every
day. Other accounts have confirmed the Persians’ taste
for fragrances. When the Persian king Darius III was defeated
in 331 BC at the battle of Arbelle, a chest was found in his
tent which contained all sorts of aromatic lotions. Alexander
the Great replaced these with the works of Homer. From these
accounts, we also learn that the Persian kings and their governors,
the Strapes, would paint their faces outrageously for seven-day
long festivals, where aromatic wines of fig, rose, nard and
absinthe were served.
However, none of these historical reports
indicate any sign of perfume making in the cities of Persepolis
or Ectabane. They point to the fact that the Persian kings
were compelled to obtain basic fragrances from their Parthian
neighbors, for their own pleasure as well as their court and
concubines, but were not used for funeral rites. The Persians
also used (and abused) kohl by painting their face to such
an extent that the Greek historian Stabon says they resembled
women. Unfortunately this habitual luxury and general moral
decadence led to the fall of the Medeo-Persian Empire with
all of its 120 provinces stretching from Ethiopia to India.
While one really can’t say that their extravagant use
of scent led to the fall of the empire, their search for fragrance
certainly didn’t help. This civilization, from which
the rose originates, did not make its mark on history by improving
the art of perfume making as one would have to wait for the
ancient Greek and Roman civilizations to raise perfume making
to an art form.
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