Sacred Resins: The Recipe

From the Temple to the Bathroom Sink

Toothpaste is one of the oldest recipes humans have. A fourth-century Egyptian papyrus, held today in Vienna, records a formula for "powder for white and perfect teeth" — rock salt, mint, dried iris flower, pepper. The Romans scrubbed with powdered chalk. Across the Arabian peninsula and North Africa, people have cleaned their teeth with the miswak — a teeth-cleaning twig from the Salvadora persica tree — for thousands of years, a practice that continues today.