Innovation No. 9 of 77 in the book
Breath Mints
A recipe for fresh breath written in the Ebers Papyrus
- When
- c. 1550 BCE
- Dynasty
- 18th Dynasty
- Era
- New Kingdom
The world’s first breath mint is a recipe in the Ebers Papyrus, written around 1550 BCE in the early New Kingdom.
It calls for frankincense, myrrh and cinnamon boiled with honey and shaped into little pellets, to be sucked or chewed to sweeten the mouth.
These weren’t candy. Bad breath signaled rot and disease, and the aromatic resins genuinely masked it while their oils fought some of the bacteria causing it.
Long before Tic Tacs, Egypt was rolling breath fresheners by hand.
The recipe sits in the Ebers Papyrus, dated to about 1550 BCE: frankincense, myrrh and cinnamon boiled with honey and rolled into small pellets. Those were costly imports, carried up from Punt and the Arabian coast, which says something about how seriously the problem was taken. Bad breath was read as a sign of rot inside the body, so the pellets were dispensed as medicine rather than as a sweet.
Frequently Asked Questions
Were these a treatment or a luxury?
A treatment, as the Egyptians understood it. Foul breath was taken as evidence of decay inside the body, which is why the pellets appear in a medical papyrus and not in a recipe collection.
Did the ingredients do anything beyond smelling good?
Some, yes. The aromatic oils in frankincense and myrrh have measurable antibacterial activity, so the pellets worked against part of what was causing the smell as well as covering it.