I asked on our Facebook page for suggestions for our 50th post and got a lot of interesting suggestions. We’ll get to them all eventually (and you can always submit more!)... For now, we’ll take one of our reader’s questions:
“[What about] something that relates to the interaction between children and henna culture? Not sure how much there is there, but it's always been something I've been curious about.”A great question! And there is definitely plenty to talk about. I know that many henna artists have introduced their kids to henna at a young age, so hopefully they’ll enjoy learning about these historical precedents.
Some of the earliest henna records involve children! Archaeologists have found children’s mummies from ancient Egypt with hennaed hair and nails, like the adults. Unfortunately we don’t know whether the henna was part of the funerary preparations or whether it was used during life. A papyrus from Hellenistic Egypt records that a child was buried with three branches: ebony for shade, a grapevine for drink, and henna for perfume (Smith 2009: 280-281).
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| An infant mummy from Roman Egypt (ca. 18-134 CE) with hennaed hair, from Jackowski et al. |
