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Great Hair Days in Ancient Egypt
By Ilene Springer
There was probably no better time for hair than
in ancient Egypt. You could dye it, cut it, braid it, shave it,
weave charms into it—and then there were the wigs—of countless
designs. The ancient Egyptians-- both men and women--were known
for hating facial and body hair and used all kinds of shaving
implements to get rid of it. But hair on the head? They loved it—and
had so many ways of showing it.
"Human hair was of great importance in
ancient Egypt," writes Egyptologist Joann Fletcher, Ph.D.,
for Egypt Revealed magazine. "Rich or poor of both
genders treated hair—their own or locks obtained elsewhere—as
a highly pliable means of self-expression."
But hair styles were more than self-expression.
Wigs, which the Egyptians were very fond of, not only allowed for
ornate hair decorating, but also helped the ancient Egyptians with
cleanliness,  protected the (shaved) scalp from the sun and kept
the head cool and also prevented that modern-day scourge—head
lice, according to Fletcher. She writes, "Our research has
turned up the world’s oldest head lice, which bedeviled an
Egyptian from Abydos about 5000 years ago."
How do we know about ancient Egyptian hair?
Egypt’s hot and dry conditions naturally preserved the soft
tissues of the body after death, including the nails, skin and
hair. This is true even of poor people who were simply buried in
the sand and not mummified. From this process we have seen the
many different ways the ancient Egyptians adorned their hair.
There is archaeological evidence that hair extensions and dyes
were used in Egypt at least as early as 3400 B.C.
We have also recovered many different tomb
paintings and statues that show elaborate hair styles. A most
interesting feature on many of the  statues is the artistic
rendering of a bit of the person’s natural hair peeking through
under the wig, indicating that wigs were a desired form of hair
ornament and were an obvious supplement to the hair—and not used
to replace the natural hair.
It is the tomb paintings show the hair in
"motion." Many paintings show women with their ornate
wigs topped by a perfumed cone, often worn during festive
occasions, which melted and cascaded over the wig as the evening
went on. The tomb paintings also show men and women getting their
hair done by other individuals, probably servants. There is
evidence that the Egyptians cut their hair with very sharp blades
as early as 3000 B.C.
What is most intriguing, according to Fletcher,
is that women’s wigs were less elaborate than those of men’s.
Therefore, they may have appeared more natural looking. One
exception was a female mummy discovered in the Valley of the
Golden Mummies with a mask on her head with a unique hairstyle at
the back arranged in a round cake-like shape, according to
Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass.
For the most part, women used hair extensions to
fill out thinning hair or just make regular tresses more
luxuriant. Wigs and extensions were almost always made of human
hair—either collected from the individual or bought or traded
from someone else. Wigs and extensions were  fashioned with a
variety of clever weaves and knots that were secured into or onto
the real hair (or scalp) with beeswax and resin. Many wigs had an
internal padding of date-palm fiber that gave the wigs their
famous fullness.
Braids were a favorite form of hair extension,
and some were woven into intricate designs to give more length and
greater style. According to Fletcher, a man buried at Mostagedda
had used thread to fasten lengths of human hair to his own. The
wavy brown hair of Queen Meryet-Amun had been filled out around
the crown and temples with tapered braids. She was also buried, as
many well-to-do women, with a duplicate set of braids.
 The ancient Egyptians hated gray hair and would
use a variety of methods to eliminate it. Sometimes the hair would
be dyed after death. The dye of choice was vegetable henna, which,
five thousand years later is still used by many native Egyptians
(and people abroad) for the same purpose. In one mummy, the henna
dyed the natural dark brown hair an auburn color, while turning
the unpigmented white hairs a bright orange.
Art was a part of everyday life of the ancient
Egyptians. And it is clear that they considered their hair as a
supreme form of self-art which had endless possibilities. Again,
we can thank the skill of these ancient artisans and the climate
for allowing us to still enjoy what they did thousands of years
ago.
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Ilene Springer writes on ancient Egypt. She is a
student of museum studies at Harvard University in Boston.
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