Kyphi
Incense used in ancient Egypt
Kyphi, cyphi, or Egyptian cyphi is a compound incense that was used in ancient Egypt for religious and medical purposes.
Etymology
Kyphi (Latin: cyphi) is romanized 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.
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. 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 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.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kyphi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.