In the hushed halls of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the air isn’t just thick with history. A new study has for the first time systematically studied the smell of ancient Egyptian mummies. These millennia-old remains emit scents that have been described as woody,

Ancient Egyptian mummification techniques almost always focused on ensuring the best preservation possible. These methods developed over hundreds of years, and reflected different societal factors at those points in time.

We know what they look like, and even sound like, but there’s one question you might not have pondered: what do ancient Egyptian mummies smell like? Whether you wanted to know or not, scientists have now given us an answer.