The candle is one of the oldest objects in human history. Before it became a decorative accessory or a wellbeing tool, it was an absolute necessity — a way of pushing back darkness, marking the sacred, measuring time. What is remarkable is the continuity of that relationship. For thousands of years, human beings have lit flames and scented them. Here is why.
The first perfumed fires: Egypt and Mesopotamia
The earliest traces of candles date to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, around 3000 BCE. These were not candles in the sense we know today — more torches and oil lamps, made from reeds soaked in rendered animal fat. The Egyptians used them in religious ceremonies, to illuminate temples and accompany funerary rites.
Fragrance was not an added luxury: it was central to the ritual. Egyptians burned incense, myrrh, and cedar resin in their temples — preparations called kyphi, some of whose recipes have survived to the present day. These blends were burned in the evening, at sunset, to mark the passage from day to night. A practice that, viewed in this light, is not so different from what many people still do today.
Rome and the wicked candle
The Romans are generally credited with inventing the wick candle, around the second century BCE. They dipped reeds in rendered tallow — animal fat — to create portable candles used during travel, ceremonies, and to light homes. The Roman candle was functional, without the elaborate fragrance of Egyptian rites, but it laid the technical groundwork for what came next.
In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church became the primary patron of candles in Europe. Beeswax, cleaner and more pleasant to burn than tallow, was reserved for churches and royal courts. For the rest of the population, malodorous tallow remained the norm for centuries.
The nineteenth century and the arrival of paraffin
The real technical revolution came in the mid-nineteenth century, with the discovery of paraffin — a petroleum derivative — around 1850. Paraffin burns cleanly, is cheap to produce, and allows for standardised manufacturing. The candle became accessible to all social classes. Paradoxically, this is also the moment it began to lose its primary function: electric lighting, which spread through the late nineteenth century, made it progressively redundant.
It was this displacement from utility that would, paradoxically, allow it to reinvent itself.
The twentieth century: from necessity to desire
Stripped of its practical function, the candle took on new meaning through the twentieth century. It became a decorative object, a support for domestic ritual, a vehicle for fragrance. The scented candle industry expanded dramatically from the 1980s and 1990s onward, driven by the rise of wellness culture and growing attention to the home as a space for restoration.
The 2000s and 2010s brought the arrival of plant-based waxes — soy, coconut, rapeseed — offering an alternative to paraffin and responding to growing demand for more natural products. The artisan candle, with its carefully developed formulations and complex fragrances, established itself as a quality object in its own right.
What does not change
What is striking, across this long history, is the constancy of the gesture. Lighting a flame, pairing it with a scent, creating an atmosphere: this is what Egyptians did in their temples, what monks did in their chapels, what we do in our living rooms on a winter evening. The materials have changed, the contexts too. But the need that a candle answers — to create a moment, mark a space, slow down — is exactly the same.
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