Kyphi: making the temple incense, from the recipes that actually survive

Kyphi was an ancient Egyptian compound incense that was at once incense, perfume and medicine — burned in temples at dusk, worn, and taken internally. We cite the tradition and name the source, because for once we have the primary texts: the recipes were inscribed on temple walls and recorded by Plutarch, Dioscorides and Galen. The surviving recipes - The Edfu Temple recipe (Temple of Horus, Ptolemaic): the most complete, a ~16-ingredient formula. The base is black raisins macerated in wine, oasis wine, and raw honey. The heavy resins are frankincense, myrrh, mastic and pine resin. Aromatic woods and roots include sweet flag/calamus, cyperus/galingale, camel grass, aspalathus and sweet cinnamon wood. Spices: juniper berries and cardamom. - The Philae Temple recipe (Temple of Isis): a higher ratio of myrrh, bdellium and labdanum, burned at twilight as an apotropaic and sleep-harmonising smoke. - Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride §80: a 16-ingredient version, which is why we can read a temple formula in a classical text at all. The method, as inscribed Dry herbs and woods pulverised and steeped in the macerating wine; raisins mashed and steeped; resins melted with honey and boiled to a viscous mass; everything combined, rolled into small glossy black pellets, and aged in darkness for weeks. The aging is part of the technology, not a delay. The rule of this board Named tradition, named source, and the plant chemistry where it is known — the resin and aromatic actives are a Pharmacology question; the rite and the text are this one. Full recipes, stages and the classical sources: https://wiki.soapbox.community/wiki/Kyphi