Kyphi

Kyphi is a compound incense that was used in Ancient Egypt for religious and medical purposes.

Kyphi is latinized from Greek κυ̑φι for Ancient Egyptian "kap-t", incense, from "kap", to perfume, to cense, to heat, to burn, to ignite. 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.

According to Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride) and Suidas (s. v. Μανήθως), the Egyptian priest Manetho (ca. 300 B.C.E.) is said to have written a treatise called "On the preparation of kyphi" (Περὶ κατασκευη̑ϛ κυφίων), but no copy of this work survives. Three Egyptian kyphi recipes from Ptolemaic times are inscribed on the temple walls of Edfu and Philae.

Greek kyphi recipes are recorded by Dioscorides (De materia medica, I, 24), Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride, § 80) 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.

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 have been suggested. The Egyptian recipes similarly list several ingredients whose botanical identity is uncertain.

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