The word perfume derives from the Latin perfumare, meaning "to smoke through".Perfumery, as the art of making perfumes, began in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley Civilization and possibly Ancient China. It was further refined by the Romans and the Muslims.
The world's first-recorded chemist is considered to be a woman named Tapputi, a perfume maker mentioned in a cuneiform tablet from the 2nd millennium BC in Mesopotamia. She distilled flowers, oil, and calamus with other aromatics, then filtered and put them back in the still several times.
On the Indian subcontinent, perfume and perfumery existed in the Indus civilization (3300 BC β 1300 BC).