Tapputi

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title: "Tapputi" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["11th-century-bc-people", "11th-century-bc-women", "ancient-women-scientists", "babylonian-women", "babylonian-people", "court-scholars", "iraqi-women-scientists", "perfumers", "women-chemists", "ancient-courtiers"] description: "Babylonian perfume maker and chemist" topic_path: "general/11th-century-bc-people" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapputi" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Babylonian perfume maker and chemist ::

Tapputi, also referred to as Tapputi-Belatekallim ("Belatekallim" refers to a female overseer of a palace),{{citation

| last1 = Houlihan | first1 = Sherida | last2 = Wotiz | first2 = John H. | date = June 1975 | doi = 10.1021/ed052p362 | issue = 6 | journal = Journal of Chemical Education | page = 362 | title = Women in chemistry before 1900 | volume = 52| bibcode = 1975JChEd..52..362H}} is one of the world's first recorded chemists, a perfume-maker mentioned in a cuneiform tablet dated around 1200 BC in Babylonian Mesopotamia. She used flowers, oil, and calamus along with cyperus, myrrh, and balsam. She added water or other solvents then distilled and filtered several times. This is also the oldest referenced still.

She also was an overseer at the Royal Palace, and worked with a researcher named (—)-ninu (the first part of her name has been lost).

Work

Tapputi used the first recorded still and wrote the first known treatise on perfume making, which is preserved on a clay tablet. She developed a technique using solvents in order to make scents lighter and longer lasting.

In popular culture

• Tapputi is one of the main characters of the animated webseries Super Science Friends

References

References

1. (1999). "Women of Science: Righting the Record". Indiana Univ. Press.
2. Levey, Martin. (1973). "Early Arabic Pharmacology: An Introduction Based on Ancient and Medieval Sources". Brill Archive.
3. Rayner-Canham, Marelene, and Geoffrey Rayner-Canham. ''Women in Chemistry: Their Changing Roles from Alchemical Times to the Mid-Twentieth Century''. First edition. Chemical Heritage Foundation, 9 June 2005. 1. Print.
4. Rhoades, Tiffany. (2017-01-31). "Tapputi Belatekallim, the First Chemist".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::