Innovation No. 7 of 77 in the book

Toothpaste

A cleaning paste made from ash, salt, and herbs

When

c. 1550 BCE

Dynasty

18th Dynasty

Era

New Kingdom

Egyptians were mixing tooth-cleaning and whitening powders by the New Kingdom, around 1550 BCE.

The fullest surviving written recipe is much later — a 4th-century CE papyrus in the Austrian National Library in Vienna — but it describes a practice that was already ancient by then.

The instructions: grind rock salt, mint, dried iris flower and pepper into a powder and rub it on the teeth. It even promises ‘clean, white teeth.’

When a modern dentist mixed and tried it, the paste worked — though the iris made his gums bleed. Iris root does in fact fight gum disease; the recipe was ahead of its evidence.

Toothpaste — minty and whitening, sold as such — was already on the Nile.

The evidence comes in two layers. New Kingdom medical papyri, written in hieratic around 1550 BCE, already record powders for cleaning and whitening teeth. The fullest surviving recipe is much later — a fourth-century CE papyrus held in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. The Vienna text is the best-preserved version, not the earliest; the practice it sets down was old by the time it was written.

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