Kheops

The chamber has been closed for four thousand years, and yet something in it is still warm.

You go in with a lamp, because there is no other light. The first breath is elemi: a resin that smells of lemon peel and black pepper at once, fresh and sharp, the incense the priests would have burned to clear the air before anyone entered. It cuts through the dust. Deeper in, the walls change. A burning-woods accord takes over, dry, tarry, sweet with woodsmoke and something like charred pine, as if a fire had been lit here once and never quite gone out. You put your hand on the stone and it is warm. At the very bottom, in the dark, vanilla: Bourbon vanilla oil from Madagascar, by Maison Lautier, rich and dark and almost boozy, the smell of a sweetness that has had millennia to concentrate. You understand, then, why they sealed it. It was not to keep people out.