ORANGE POMANDERS
When Antony was not yet in kindergarten he fell in love with ancient Egyptian history. That Christmas we made orange clove-studded pomanders and pretended all the while that they were mummies. The children thrilled to see the fat juicy oranges shrink with time, growing hard and dense as our "embalming" spices preserved them. Although that was over seven years ago, we still have those lovely scented pomanders, as fragrant as the day they were made.
Years later we found a clever article in a children's science magazine, ChemMatters, that told of two scientists who followed ancient Egyptian embalming procedures and made a modern mummy. We thrilled to the description of the herbs and spices used to embalm the corpse, as they were the same ones we used for our oranges! Talk about learning something!
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