Olive oil and lemon can be much more than a salad dressing. Amira El-Noshokaty checks out some old-fashioned beauty recipes Click to view caption Olive oil with lemon peel for dry skin, natural liquid soap from a blend of natural oil moisturisers and a perfume cream from pure jasmine oil -- all in all 84 Nefertari products, all 100 per cent natural and 100 per cent Egyptian. They come arranged in wicker baskets, wrapped in wild flowers and in wooden bottles. They form the contents of the local equivalent of the "Body Shop", the main outlet of which is located in the Hanging Church area of Old Cairo. "The idea came to me by mere chance," Dr Mona Erian, founder of Nefertari products, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Four years ago my daughter became allergic to her shampoo. When I examined the substances that were in the shampoo I was shocked to discover that there were 16 chemical substances in the bottle. Among them was sodium laureate sulfate, a substance proven to be carcinogenic." She remembers the discovery as a turning point in her life. A pharmacist herself, she began taking samples of natural products manufactured internationally. "My tests showed that many of them were not 100 per cent chemical-free and that is when the idea hit me," she said. She decided to tap into a long list of natural beauty products with a pedigree dating back to Pharaonic times. It is a heritage which inspired the name of her line: Nefertari. According to Dr Khalid El- Annani, professor of Egyptology at the Faculty of Hotels and Tourism, Helwan University, Nefertari (pronounced Nofret- iry) means 'the most beautiful of them all'. It is the name of one of Ramsis II's chief wives, part of whose allure was her waist-long hair. She was honoured by having her own temple in Abu Simbel. "Nefertari was buried in the Valley of the Queens with all her make up and accessories, including her earrings. On the walls of her temple and in her tomb, she was always painted in shades of yellow which is the colour of femininity, in her white, wide and transparent dress," El- Annani told the Weekly. In her book An Ancient Egyptian Herbal, Lise Manniche gives further insight into the importance of cosmetic production in ancient Egypt. "Around 1400 BC, three ladies of the court of Tuthmosis III were buried with costly royal funerary equipment which included cosmetics (currently to be found at the British Museum). Two of the jars contained a cleansing cream made of oil and lime." Some prescriptions for body scrub, says the book, are given in the medical papyri. An allegedly successful remedy for wrinkles is gum of frankincense, wax, fresh moringa oil and lyperus grass, ground and mixed with fermented plant juice and applied daily. Not all of Erian's recipes are that old. "The kohl I make -- and use -- is the same my grandmother used to make. The same method continues to be used in the villages. "We take natural gum leaves and bathe them in olive oil for six months. Then we burn them and the smoke (deposit) is used as kohl powder," she said. Erian's grandmother is also the source of her recipe for rose water which she makes in a copper tank, mixing rose petals with distilled water. It is a concoction that doubles as a refreshing addition to cold drinking water -- one or two drops -- in the hot summer months. But this is not just about going back to nature. It is Erian says, "Going forward to nature. I approach nature scientifically. I only use substances that are not controversial and have proved to have a specific impact on the body." For example, rosemary is prescribed for oily skin. Candles which do not contain paraffin and perfume made out of pure jasmine oil -- these are products that have proven benefits for the body. The work is done at one of the small- domed workshops adjacent to Al-Dar restaurant on the Saqqara Road. You cannot miss it. The unmistakable smell of basil, olive oil and camomile lead you to the entrance. Here, white clad workers, who add copious amounts of olive oil to just about everything, carry out the slow soap making process. Six beakers of soap are produced daily. Each beaker makes two rectangular shaped moulds, and the content of each mould is then cut into six pieces of soap. It all adds up to 72 bars of soap a day which take 12 days to solidify. At the end of the process each bar is hand-wrapped in cellophane and the "Proudly Handmade in Egypt" sticker -- that goes with Nefertari products -- is added. Heba El-Ashmawy, a business consultant and a regular buyer of Nefertari products, uses the olive oil with lemon peel soap. She told the Weekly that her hair had stopped falling out. But El-Ashmawy is one of only a few Egyptians to buy an indigenous cosmetic. Most of Nefertari's customers so far are foreigners. In a market that has become dominated by imported fancy hair and skin products, locally produced options are making a slow if sure incursion. "We have spent many years promoting things that are not our own; imitating rather than preserving our own identity," says Erian. But, she argues: "We can, if we want, produce high quality goods because we already have the raw material." She grows most of what goes into her products. "I have a small farm where I get my honey and other raw materials. Organic cotton seeds come from an organic farm and cotton material comes from a special textile factory in Al-Mahalla that also uses organic cotton. Olive oil comes all the way from the Anba Maqar Monastery in Wadi Al-Natroun." To these, Erian says, she adds no form of preservative even though this puts Nefertari products at a disadvantage in that they don't have a long shelf life. Her products,. moreover, are not cheap. Production -- especially the hand wrapping -- is costly. In future, some of the soaps may be sold without wrapping to make them cheaper for the average citizen.
