Egyptian practice used aromatic cedar oil in embalming and in temple rites, valuing exactly the preservative, decay-resisting quality that made the wood a natural emblem of permanence and incorruption. It is worth knowing that the English word cedar is applied loosely to a range of unrelated aromatic conifers, various junipers, the North American western red cedar (a Thuja), and others, so that a correspondence table listing cedar may mean any of several trees. The true cedars of the genus Cedrus are the Lebanese, Atlas, Cyprus and Himalayan (deodar) species; the deodar's Sanskrit name devadaru means timber of the gods, giving the tree a parallel sacred standing in India.
That same preservative, insect-resisting quality still has an entirely secular modern use: cedar-lined chests, closets and blocks are sold today specifically to deter clothes moths, a direct, unbroken descendant of the same chemistry the Egyptians relied on for embalming, even though almost no one buying a cedar chest today thinks of it as continuous with three-thousand-year-old funerary practice. The scent itself, largely due to compounds called cedrol and thujopsene, is genuinely repellent to many insects, giving a real chemical basis to a domestic habit most people follow purely out of inherited custom.