Stypsis in the Venerean Arts: Some Shared Technical Vocabulary of Perfumery, Dyeing and Alchemy

0583341 - FLÚ 2024 RIV eng A - Abstract
Coughlin, Sean
Stypsis in the Venerean Arts: Some Shared Technical Vocabulary of Perfumery, Dyeing and Alchemy.
[Stypsis in the Venerean Arts: Some Shared Technical Vocabulary of Perfumery, Dyeing and Alchemy. Gießen, 30.05.2023-30.05.2023]
Method of presentation: Zvaná přednáška
Event organizer: Institut für Altertumswissenschaften, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GM21-30494M
Institutional support: RVO:67985955
Keywords : sensory studies * smell studies * history of science * history of chemistry * qualia * history of perfume
OECD category: Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology

Stypsis (στῦψις) and related terms (στύμμα, στύφω and compounds) occur in Greek and Latin texts about perfumery by, e.g., Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Pliny the Elder and Galen. In this context, they are used to describe ingredients and processes related to a part of the perfume making process during which an oil is prepared for use. For several centuries, translators have rendered stypsis with a word in the target language that denotes a process of thickening. In this paper, I show that such translations are not only misleading, but that they also obscure the relationship between stypsis in perfumery and in other of what I call “the Venerean arts”: the arts associated with Aphrodite or Venus that similarly involve transforming something plain into something more luxurious, like fabric dyeing, the production of artificial stones and the production of metals (the ancestors of alchemy). The practical, lexical and conceptual similarities across these different crafts is noted regularly in ancient technical sources, even though modern scholars have missed them. Whether these are continuities due to the use of common ingredients and methods, and whether they imply a common way of understanding artistic production and material change is a question I return to at the end of the paper. I proceed in two parts. The first is negative: it argues that ‘thickening’ does not work as a translation of stypsis in perfumery. The second part is positive: it provides evidence that, whatever stypsis means, it refers to analogous processes in perfumery, dyeing and alchemy in Greek and Latin sources before the fifth century CE.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0351634