Kyphi
{{Short description|Incense used in ancient Egypt}}
{{Hiero|kp.t
Determ: grains, incense|
Kyphi, cyphi, or Egyptian cyphi is a compound incense that was used in ancient Egypt for religious and medical purposes.
Etymology
Kyphi ({{langx|la|cyphi}}) is romanized from Greek κυ̑φι for Ancient Egyptian "kap-t", incense, from "kap", to perfume, to cense, to heat, to burn, to ignite.{{citation | author=E. A. Wallis Budge | entry=kap-t | title=Egytian Hieroglyphic Dictionary | volume=2 | publisher=John Murray | year=1920 | page=786b | url=https://archive.org/details/egyptianhierogly02budguoft}}{{citation | author=Heinrich Brugsch | entry=kep, kepu | title=Hieroglyphisch-demotisches Wörterbuch | volume=4 | publisher=Hinrich | year=1868 | page=1492 | url=https://archive.org/details/hieroglyphischde04brug}} The word root also exists in Indo-European languages, with a similar meaning, like in Sanskrit कपि (kapi) "incense", Greek καπνός "smoke", and Latin vapor.{{citation | author=August Fick | entry=kvap, kap | title=Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen | edition=2nd | publisher=Vandenhoek & Ruprecht | year=1871 | page=52 | url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_RQ8AAAAAYAAJ}}{{citation | author=Monier Williams | title=A Sanskrit-English Dictionary | entry=कपि | publisher=Clarendon Press | year=1872 | page=202a | url=https://archive.org/details/1872sanskriten00moniuoft}}
History
According to Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride) and the Suda (s. v. Μανήθως), the Egyptian priest Manetho (ca. 300 BCE) is said to have written a treatise called "On the preparation of kyphi" (Περὶ κατασκευη̑ϛ κυφίων), but no copy of this work survives.{{citation | author=E. A. Wallis Budge | title=A History of Egypt | volume=1 | publisher=Oxford University Press | year=1902 | page=129 | url=https://archive.org/details/historyofegyptfr01budg}}{{citation | editor=William Smith | author=Leonhard Schmitz | entry=MANETHO | title=Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology | volume=2 | publisher=Murray | year=1849 | pages=915a–916a}} Three Egyptian kyphi recipes from Ptolemaic times are inscribed on the temple walls of Edfu and Philae.{{citation | author=Victor Loret | title=Le kyphi, parfum sacré des anciens égyptiens | journal=Journal asiatique | volume=10 | issue=juillet-août | year=1887 | pages=76–132 | url=http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k93232q}}
Greek kyphi recipes are recorded by Dioscorides (De materia medica, I, 24), Plutarch{{citation | author=Plutarch | title=De Iside et Osiride (§80), in Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. | publisher=Harvard University Press. | year=1936 | url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plut.+De+Iside+80&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0239}} and Galen (De antidotis, II, 2).
The seventh century physician Paul of Aegina records a "lunar" kyphi of twenty-eight ingredients and a "solar" kyphi of thirty-six.{{citation needed|date=March 2015}}
Production
The Egyptian recipes have sixteen ingredients each. Dioscorides has ten ingredients, which are common to all recipes. Plutarch gives sixteen, Galen fifteen. Plutarch implies a mathematical significance to the number of sixteen ingredients.
Some ingredients remain obscure. Greek recipes mention aspalathus, which Roman authors describe as a thorny shrub. Scholars do not agree on the identity of this plant: a species of Papilionaceae (Cytisus, Genista or Spartium), Convolvulus scoparius, and Genista acanthoclada{{citation | author=Immanuel Löw | title=Aramäische Pflanzennamen | publisher=Engelmann | year=1881 | page=341 | url=https://archive.org/details/AramaeischePflanzennamen}} have been suggested. The Egyptian recipes similarly list several ingredients whose botanical identity is uncertain.{{Citation needed|date=January 2021}}
The manufacture of kyphi involves blending and boiling the ingredients in sequence. According to Galen, the result was rolled into balls and placed on hot coals to give a perfumed smoke; it was also drunk as a medicine for liver and lung ailments.