Wandering Stars

Welcome to Egypt!

I’ll never forget the moment I stepped out onto that downtown Cairo street at high noon…

Welcome to Egypt!

or

How I was first introduced to the Ancient Egyptian Seven Sacred Oils

When I booked my first and only (so far) trip to Egypt, I could only take 10 days off from my business due to a large ongoing project and had but 6 days there to make the most of it by visiting the museums, pyramids, temple ruins, and tombs exclusively - no Nile cruises, hot air balloon rides or fancy dining. Scheduling tour guides in Cairo and Luxor for Friday 3/16 through Wednesday 3/22 over the Vernal Equinox, it was the first time I had ever traveled overseas, and I traveled solo. Those 6 days are among the most life-changing I have ever experienced.

My first day, Friday, was to be spent on my own at the Egyptian Museum at Tahrir Square. Unfortunately, however, due to a late takeoff of my flight from Sacramento to Istanbul, I missed my connecting flight to Cairo and had a six-hour layover overnight at the Istanbul airport. I didn’t arrive in Cairo until 4:00 a.m., and I was so exhausted after finally checking into my downtown hotel that I slept in until almost 11:30 a.m., losing half of my first day! After waking, I hurriedly gathered my wits, splashed some water on my face, and at high noon headed out onto the busy street for a short walk down Kasr al Nile past Taalat Harb Square and headed directly to the nearby Tahrir Square and the Egyptian Museum.

Having stopped in some shade of a building just across the street from the museum, I decided to first find some coffee and maybe snatch a bite to eat to go before spending the rest of the day at the museum. Luckily, I had phone and data service, so I was looking for a local coffee place rather than simply going to the nearby Starbucks around the corner. I am so glad that I didn’t.

Just then a city bus pulled over, and as I looked up I caught the eye of a friendly-looking fellow who was just stepping off the bus. He smiled and came up to me asking if he could help me find something - so I asked about coffee. Introducing himself as Dr. Sherif, he said that he worked with the University at the Egyptian Museum in the animal mummy section and had about an hour to kill before heading to work, kindly offering to show me his favorite coffee place nearby. I eagerly agreed. Here was my first “guide”.

The cafe was off the main drag on a side street and in what I would have to call a dilapidated alleyway. Dr. Sherif ordered for us while a young couple enjoyed lunch and hookah-smoking fellows dressed in galibayas checked us out. It was Turkish coffee… the best darn coffee I could ever remember tasting!

Dr. Sherif asked me what brought me to Cairo, and I told him about my plans for the coming days. He then squinted at me and asked what it was that actually spurred my interest, to which I answered that it was a spiritual journey for me. At this, he smiled broadly and said that I would find very much of such things in Egypt. I asked if he was a spiritual person and he responded that one cannot live in Egypt and not be. He then asked if I was familiar with the seven chakras of Hinduism to which I said yes. He informed me that the ancient Egyptians had seven “souls” in their religion that corresponded to these same chakras, and each was associated with one of their seven sacred anointing oils.

Now, I was already familiar with both the alabaster “oil” or “unguent” jars from Tutankhamun’s tomb, as well as the Egyptian concept of seven (or so) souls thanks to William S. Burroughs, but was rather amazed at having never heard of the Seven Sacred Oils before this! I was utterly captivated by the turn of conversation and told him so.

He told me that there were many such alabaster stone oil jars at the museum, then suggested that I should meet a friend of his on the way back who ran a small perfume shop and could tell me more about them. I knew that “sell” was probably more like it - but I was truly fascinated by the subject and honestly interested in the possibility of purchasing some nice fragrances. I figured it wouldn’t take long anyway, so after finishing our coffee we made our way a few blocks to The Lotus Palace. He went in first and had a few words with someone inside, and out came a fellow introducing himself as Kareem Ali, and invited me in to join them.

After our introductions, Kareem invited me to look around while he finished packing an order for a customer, warming up after his business partner and customers left for lunch and we three had the shop to ourselves. I sat down, and after offering us some mint tea, he told me that the Lotus Palace had been in business since 1919, and brought out a dog-eared binder with old photographs and newspaper clippings of the shop and his forebears, and some of the international VIPs it had served since then. Obviously, Dr. Sherif had informed him of my particular interest, for in this binder was a photocopy of an ancient funerary anointing oil palette found in the tomb of Anh-af at Giza with the seven oil names in hieroglyphs inscribed under seven fingertip-size depressions for each one. I had never seen one before, so I was hooked then and there! He explained that the seven sacred oils are listed in various temple and tomb inscriptions, such as the Pyramid of Unas at the Saqqara necropolis, where many of these oil palettes were found.

He then directed me to the painted papyrus pictured above under the glass of the shop’s coffee table, with the seven Hindu chakras and associated fragrant oils. These oils are called attars in Arabic - all-natural botanical essential oil fragrances as opposed to alcohol-based and/or synthetic perfumes. He continued by briefly describing the seven different ancient Egyptian “souls” (which I will approach in my Seven Sacred Oils article on this site) and suggested that they and the chakras represent the same spiritual principles as the chakras - which they do… more or less. He asked if I would like to sample the fragrances, and of course, I did, and they were all lovely!

I asked, perhaps somewhat incredulously, if there was any evidence that any of these seven fragrances were the same as the seven Egyptian oils. Kareem admitted that to his knowledge there wasn’t, but that his forebears and those of several other Cairo perfume shopkeepers believed that they were - most especially lotus oil, as the fragrant flower was sacred to the ancient Egyptians and a ubiquitous offering in both their temples and tombs. He explained that the Lotus Palace, named for this sacred flower, has always used the Egyptian “Seven Sacred Oils” for these botanical attars since all of them are the most coveted fragrances in the perfume trade with traditional use in both Persian and East Indian aromatherapy.

He added that the ancient Egyptians had long imported and venerated incense and perfumes imported from India and elsewhere - which as it turns out they indeed did. He said that as far as he knew, the attribution of these fragrances to the seven sacred oils went back at least to the opening of his shop in 1919 and the discovery of the oil palettes. He went on to say that the actual ingredients of the seven oils have not been found listed in any papyrus or inscriptions, although I would soon discover that, truth be known, they actually had!

I didn’t know then that we DO have lists of ingredients and recipes for the Egyptian sacred oils and incense, which were inscribed on the walls of the “laboratory” room at the temple of Horus at Edfu, one of my scheduled visits just a few days later. My subsequent research into the translation of these hieroglyphs reveals unequivocally that the Hindu chakra perfumes are not even remotely the same. However, there are two Egyptian blue lotus oil recipes, one called Madjet at Edfu, separate from the seven sacred oils group. Upon my return and comparisons, the Lotus Palace lotus oil appears to be derived from the Indian sacred pink/white lotus Nelumbo nucifera, which has a lovely scent in its own right, but is not the same. I also discovered that the Egyptian blue lotus Nymphaea caerulea is not a true lotus, it is a species of water lily. (See my article “Seshen - The Egyptian Blue Lotus.”)

It’s impossible to say exactly when the Cairo perfumers discovered the Lotus, Seven Chakras/Souls, and Seven Sacred Oils sales pitch. I suspect that at the very earliest it began soon after the Egyptian archaeological discoveries in the late 19th century, “Egyptomania”, and the subsequent European and American tourist boom, perhaps most especially after Carter discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922.

There was quite an interest in Eastern mysticism at that time throughout Europe as well, particularly in the UK, with such notoriously influential figures as Madame Blavatsky, George Gurdjieff, and Aleister Crowley being among the many notable occult figures to visit Egypt, who were well acquainted with the esoteric Hindu chakras and their perfume and attributions. Crowley himself attributes perfumes to the emanations of the Divinity in his writings on the Qabalah. However, I have read quite a bit from these authors and they never once speak of the Seven Sacred Oils of ancient Egypt - and I am quite sure they would have had they known of them.

It seems more likely that the convention began in earnest with the revitalized global popularity of East Indian mysticism with the counterculture movement in the late 1960s along with Vedic health practices, chakras and meditation, burning incense, and use of fragrant essential oils like patchouli. With the movement taking off in England and California in 1967, it quickly spread amongst the monied Western demographic that made up the bulk of the Egyptian tourist trade. The arrival of the Grateful Dead and their entourage a decade later at Giza in 1978 likely served as a further catalyst for the free-form counterculture and New Age conflation of Egyptian oils and Indian chakra perfumes. Most especially once the Cairo perfumers got wind of it, so to speak.

After all, I was very actively involved as a young man with that same “hippie” counterculture and hadn’t ever even once heard of the Seven Sacred Egyptian oils until Dr. Sherif told me about them some 50 years later. It seems to me that the chakra/perfume connection with the ancient anointing oils was more or less a phenomenon of the local Egyptian tourist gift trade than of the New Age movement which has now co-opted it. I should say here too, that it is not an altogether bad thing, but honestly, they’re not the authentic Egyptian botanical attributions. You can easily find several aromatherapy stores online today doing the very same thing in claiming these Indian chakra perfumes are the Egyptian seven sacred oils. It seems odd to me that nobody seems to care or know the difference, but it is a rather limited demographic after all.

I thanked Kareem for his candor and told him that although I needed to travel light, I would still like to buy 3-ounce bottles of each of his seven lovely Indian chakra attars. This is when he first cracked a smile. He cheerfully bottled them up and sealed them, adding four bottles of his best Fayum mint oil for a good price. I also bought a nice Persian-style mother-of-pearl inlaid wooden box for them all and stuffed it in my shoulder bag. I paid him cash in Egyptian pounds, and generously tipped him “baksheesh.”

That was when Dr. Sherif looked nervously at his watch and told me he had to get going. I looked at the time on my phone and was surprised to see it was my favorite 1:11! Mission accomplished for Sherif I suppose, but I was quite happy with this amazing new information and my purchase. I look forward to returning to the Lotus Palace someday with samples of my Blue Lotus and Seven Sacred Oils and their recipes as a token of my esteem.

During our walk back to the museum, Dr. Sherif told me a bit about his work with animal mummies, mostly cats and ibis from the Saqqara site, and how they too were often covered in a still-fragrant black pitch-like substance, which the Persians called Mumia, meaning bitumen tar, from which the term “mummy” is derived. I was beyond fascinated. He reminded me to be sure to ask my guide at Saqqara about the seven oils listed in the Pyramid of Unas. He also gave me some great advice to make the most of the rest of my afternoon at the museum, and upon arriving we both said our goodbyes.

Just before parting, he suggested that Anubis was looking out for me, and we both laughed as he walked away while I bought my ticket. Needless to say, I was beyond amazed at what had just transpired and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the fabulous warehouse that is the old Egyptian Museum - until guards began to direct me towards the door at closing time. A single afternoon wasn’t nearly enough, but I did see almost everything there that I was looking for, albeit just a tiny fraction of the fabulous overload of artifacts in that grand old warehouse! Next visit I will spend the whole day, although much of what was on display that day will have been moved by now to the new Grand Egyptian Museum, slated to open perhaps in 2024.

Among the objects I was seeking was the famous reclining Anubis jackal statue pictured below from Tutankhamun’s tomb, which had mesmerized me some 40 years earlier at the touring exhibit in Seattle in 1978. It was like a reunion of old friends!

Anubis, Anpu or Inpu, the black jackal-headed god, is the overseer of the mummification process, particularly the final anointing of the body with the sacred revivifying unguents. The museum’s Tutankhamun exhibit on the second floor was my primary destination as soon as I arrived, and there Anubis was, guarding the doorway into the secured treasury where the famous golden mask, sarcophagus, and jewelry were.

Also capturing my attention, particularly after Dr. Sherif’s revelations about the Seven Sacred Oils, was one of the exquisitely carved alabaster anointing oil jars discovered in Tutankhamun’s tomb, some of which still contain copious residue that they’ve held for at least 3,344 years.

That night back at the hotel I got on my laptop, and after a brief search found a website with an English translation of the hieroglyphs inscribed on the tomb walls in the nearly 4,400-year-old 5th Dynasty Pyramid of Unas, which I had already made arrangements to visit at Saqqara on my last day in Egypt. Here is located the earliest appearance of what are called the Pyramid Texts, the oldest religious writing in the world! Imagine how I felt, sitting there in my Cairo hotel room, searching the internet and finding that here they were, all seven anointing oils listed by name in what are called Utterances 72 - 78 on the North wall of the king’s sarcophagus chamber, just as Dr. Sherif had told me. (See Pyramid Texts Online - English Translations)

This auspicious beginning initiated my journey in Egypt and my introduction to Dynastic history, science, and sacred symbolism, and my first encounter with the Seven Sacred Oils of Ancient Egypt. My subsequent research into academic research, papers, and books going back to the end of the 19th century up to the present ultimately led me to create the reproductions sold here in my Sacred Scents Store. I was inspired to do so not only by my visit to Egypt, but I simply couldn’t find anyone else who had done so for reference. That left it up to me to accomplish for myself if I really wanted to know what their fragrances were like, so I dove straight in. The rest is, well, history.

At present, my customers, associates, and I have found so many benefits with these oils and unguents for skin and hair care, aromatherapy, meditation, entheogenic vision quests, and ceremony - it has been a truly surprising development in my own practice. All this is thanks to a friendly and helpful Egyptian named Dr. Sherif, who may, or may not, have actually worked for the museum. I don’t know. I never got a response from the e-mail address he wrote down nor to my inquiries to the museum. I’m sure somebody at the Egyptian Museum or the Lotus Palace could tell me… next time for sure. All I can say is that I got a very powerful Anubis vibe from Dr. Sherif, and it has stuck with me throughout my journey in Egypt and even up to the present. He is, after all, essentially the one responsible for the creation of Wandering Stars and ‘The Egyptian’ Sacred Scents Store.

Meanwhile, the temples and tombs where these anointing oils and incense are listed stand in mute testimony to their preeminence in ancient Egyptian religious practices, the christening of their temples, tombs, homes, and altars, in their cosmetics and medicine, and especially their incredibly effective anointing and embalming techniques - all being sacred to Anubis. And these are just the Sacred Scents alone. There is more, far far more…

… and that was just my first day in magical Egypt!

Perhaps I will put up some pages with photos of sites I visited with descriptions… someday…

Welcome to Egypt! – © 2018-2024 Shane Clayton / Wandering Stars Publishing

All Rights Reserved

Wandering Stars is dedicated to expounding the Sacred Science of Ancient Egypt

In memory and in honor of John Anthony West

Born July 9, 1932 - Wested February 6, 2018

AUM