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March 14, 2025

Smell like a god: Ancient sculptures were scented, Danish study shows

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain
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Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Science has already proven that sculptures from ancient Greece and Rome were often painted in warm colors, and now a Danish study has revealed that some were also perfumed.

"A white marble statue was not intended to be perceived as a statue in stone. It was supposed to resemble a real god or goddess," the author of the study, Cecilie Brons, told the Danish scientific website Videnskab on Friday.

The archaeologist and curator at the Copenhagen museum Glyptotek made the discovery after immersing herself in the works of Roman writers such as Cicero and inscriptions on ancient Greek temples.

"Perfume and perfumed oils are often mentioned as part of the 'decoration' that was applied to religious cult statues in antiquity," she said.

Cicero for example spoke of a ritual treatment of a statue of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, the forest and animals in Greek mythology, in the Sicilian city of Segesta which was anointed with ointment and fragrant oils.

In Delos, in Greece, inscriptions in temples reveal that some statues were maintained by rubbing them with rose-scented .

Admiring a statue during antiquity was "not just a , but also an olfactory one," Brons concluded in her study, in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology.

Previous research has found traces of pigments from long-faded paint on ancient Greek and Roman statues, showing that works long assumed to be white were in fact highly colorful.

More information: Cecilie Br酶ns, THE SCENT OF ANCIENT GRECO鈥怰OMAN SCULPTURE, Oxford Journal of Archaeology (2025).

Journal information: Oxford Journal of Archaeology

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Ancient Greek and Roman sculptures were not only painted in vibrant colors but also perfumed, enhancing their lifelike appearance. This olfactory aspect was part of the statues' decoration, as evidenced by Roman writings and Greek temple inscriptions. Statues were treated with fragrant oils, making their appreciation both a visual and olfactory experience, challenging the perception of them as mere white marble figures.

This summary was automatically generated using LLM.