I f you are on the hunt for a perfume, soap or moisturiser, an apothecary might not be your first port of call. However, a number of modern-day beauty brands can trace their roots to the apothecary tradition. Apothecaries, the forerunners of modern pharmacists, have a rich history.
In around 2600BC in Mesopotamia, early apothecaries used clay tablets to record the remedies and medicinal preparations they devised. They were also among the first parfumiers. One such clay tablet from 1200BC details a perfume created by Tapputi, a chemist and female overseer of the palace in Babylon, with ingredients including calamus, myrrh and balsam — all still used in perfumes, such as Tom Ford’s Myrrhe Mystère, today.
Apothecaries continued to flourish in ancient Egypt. The Ebers Papyrus , one of the oldest surviving Egyptian medical texts, was compiled around 1550BC. The 20m-long scroll is full of recipes for everything from birth control to migraines, mixing herbal and mineral ingredients with common foodstuffs.
It is also notable for describing the circulatory system in surprisingly accurate detail. However, it was in the Greek and Roman period that apothecaries began to differentiate themselves from general physicians..
