Kyphi is the Greek rendering of the Egyptian kapet, a compounded incense rather than a single resin or wood. Where frankincense or myrrh is one substance burned as it comes from the tree, kyphi was cooked: raisins and wine reduced with honey, then worked into a paste with myrrh, juniper, calamus, mastic, cassia and a longer list of resins and aromatics that temple recipes vary in naming, formed into pellets and left to cure before burning. Ancient authors who wrote about it, including Plutarch and Dioscorides, describe a compound of many ingredients rather than settle on one fixed list, and the temple walls at Edfu and Philae carry inscribed instructions alongside images of the priests preparing it, which is part of why kyphi is remembered as a manufactured art rather than a plant simply gathered and offered.
Its distinguishing trait in the literature is its use at day's end. Egyptian temple practice offered resin in the morning, myrrh at noon, and kyphi at the close of day, a threefold rhythm tied to the sun's daily course. Plutarch links kyphi specifically to sleep and dreaming, describing it as soothing and mildly euphoric, burned to ease the transition into night. Whether that reported effect reflects the ingredients themselves or the ritual setting they were burned in is not something the surviving sources settle, and the atlas records the association rather than the mechanism.