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| head
shaving |
Date:
Sat, 28 Aug 1993
From:
"Richard L. Goerwitz"
Subject:
head shaving; function
I'm
an interloper from the Near Eastern mailing lists. Chalk this note
up to interdisciplinary cooperation :-). In the Ancient Near East,
specifically the Syro-Pales- tinian area, head shaving was common as
a mourning rite. It was also used throughout the Near East as part
of the ritual purification process. Egyptian priests always kept
their heads shaved. Attempting to browse through the classical
literature, I have noticed an interesting trend. Herodotus, when he
goes on about Egypt being the opposite of the rest of the world,
notes that Egyptians let their hair grow out in mourning rather than
shaving. But later on (see, e.g., Lucian of Samosata's _On
Funerals_) I don't find many ref- erences. Latin literature is also
pretty sparse on shav- ing. It seems mainly to function there as a
sign of manumission. Does shaving, in fact, begin to die out as a
common mourning rite into the Hellenistic and Roman periods? Was it
ever all that important? Was it an import from the Near East to
begin with?
Date:
Sun, 29 Aug 1993 2
From:
Donald Lateiner
Subject:
Re: head shaving; function
Molly
Myerowitz Levine at Howard Univ. is the world authority on hair in
Greco-Roman and Hebrew antiquity, at least. She is preparing a
monograph on the subject. There are numerous artt. in the
anthropological literature on hair customs cross-culturally. Leach
has one. Since hair is both a badge (unalterable within limits) and
an alterable body-language emitter, institutions and
anti-institutional (marines and monks vs. hermits and
millennialists) employ it to signal caste, class, gender, status,
and age (Odysseus is baldified by Athene in Ody. 13).
Date:
Sun, 29 Aug 1993
From: Donald Lateiner
Subject:
Re: head shaving; function
Oh,
another area is shaving slaves, as in the hilarious scene in
Petronius _Satyricon_. Different but related on slavery/manumission
is the wonderful article in JRS on Tatooing by CP Jones (ca. 1972?).
Date:
Sun, 29 Aug 1993
From:
"Daniel P. Tompkins"
Subject:
Re: head shaving; function
Lateiner
and all should know that the study of hair (African-American) has
been branded by the Wall St Journal as one more sign of cultural
decline. Here we are joining in. The Journal has also attacked
Jurassic Park for turning people against science, and
Nickolodeon--the only interesting cable channel--for furtively
turning our kids into environmentalists then (equally furtively)
eliminating the environmental stuff from their evening programs--so
parents won't know what evil they're wreaking. They also want to
throw all criminals in jail and throw away the key, unless they're
Mike Milken, Elliot Abrams or Ollie North, who were all saving the
nation. Sorry to do this to you, folks; it's August, the silly
season, and Don got me started. Something serious coming up next.
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| Culled
from
classics.log9308d
and
classics.log9308e |
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