Powder ancient

Sandalwood Oil, East Indian. The use of sandalwood oil for its perfumery value is ancient, probably extending back some 4000 years. Oil from the powdered wood and roots of the tree Santalum album L. is produced primarily in India, under government control. Good quaUty oil is a pale yellow to yellow viscous Hquid characterized by an extremely soft, sweet—woody, almost ariimal—balsarnic odor. The extreme tenacity of the aroma makes it an ideal blender—fixative for woody-Oriental—floral fragrance bases. It also finds extensive use for the codistillation of other essential oils, such as rose, especially in India. There the so-called attars are made with sandalwood oil distilled over the flowers or by distillation of these flowers into sandalwood oil. The principal constituents of sandalwood oil are shown in Table 11 (37) and Figure 2. 

Potassium nitrate, essential in the manufacture of black gun powder, was produced by the Chinese, who had developed gun powder by the tenth century AD. The process involved the leaching of soil in which nitrogen from urine had combined with mineral potassium. By the early 1800s, potassium nitrate had become a strategic military chemical and was stiU produced, primarily in India, by using the ancient Chinese method. The caUche deposits in Chile are the only natural source of potassium nitrate (2). These deposits are not a rich source of potassium nitrate, purifying only to about 14% as K O. 

Some thoughts on White Powder of Gold from Egypt onwards. "There is evidence of this type of research and application in ancient times on Mt. Horeb in the Sinai Peninsula. 

FIGURE 41 Bronze disease. Bronze disease, one of the most serious corrosive processes besetting recovered bronze antiquities, results from the interaction of one component of the patina on ancient bronze, namely, cuprous chloride with atmospheric oxygen, in a damp environment. Small spots of a light green powder (composed mainly of cuprous chloride) that grow rapidly on the surface of the patina are indicative that the bronze disease process is active. Unless the chemical activity of cuprous chloride is inhibited by some conservation procedure, bronze disease generally results in the eventual total destruction of bronze objects. 

Turmeric, also known as curcuma, is an easily fading yellow dye that was used in Mesopotamia many centuries b.c.e. and later became popular in ancient Rome. It is derived from the turmeric plant, Curcuma longa, and other varieties of Curcuma indigenous to China and Southwest Asia. The dye is extracted with hot water from the shredded rhizomes of the plant and then dried into a yellow powder. The coloring matter in turmeric is the organic compound curcumin. 

The potential for the preservation of lipids is relatively high since by definition they are hydrophobic and not susceptible to hydrolysis by water, unlike most amino acids and DNA. A wide range of fatty acids, sterols, acylglycerols, and wax esters have been identified in visible surface debris on pottery fragments or as residues absorbed into the permeable ceramic matrix. Isolation of lipids from these matrices is achieved by solvent extraction of powdered samples and analysis is often by the powerful and sensitive technique of combined gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS see Section 8.4). This approach has been successfully used for the identification of ancient lipid residues, contributing to the study of artifact... 

Antimony (Sb, [Kr]4Jl05 25/L), name and symbol from the Latin corruption of Arabic al-ithmld, which is derived from Latin stibium, coming from Greek (tti3i (a cosmetic powder, Sb2S3). Known since ancient times. 

DETAILS - The powdered root of the aconite plants have been used as a poison since the time of the ancient... 

Another early use of iron oxides was as a cosmetic. The cosmetic boxes (cockleshells) found in the Royal Cemetery in the ancient Sumerian city of Ur contained a range of different colours. XRD analysis by the Research Department of the British Museum showed that the principal components of the red and yellow colours were hematite and goethite, respectively (Bimson, 1980). One box also contained a purple powder consisting of a mixture of quartz grains and large crystals of hematite. 

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