incense

chemistry

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History

incense, grains of resins (sometimes mixed with spices) that burn with a fragrant odour, widely used as an oblation. It is commonly sprinkled on lighted charcoal contained in a censer, or thurible. Incense-bearing trees were imported from the Arabian and Somali coasts into ancient Egypt, where incense was prominent in religious ritual—e.g., at the daily liturgy before the cult image of the sun god Amon-Re and in the mortuary rites, when the souls of the...

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