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adolescence, ancient Egypt, Ankhmahor, circumcision, culture, Field Museum, Karnak, monument, museums, Oriental Institute, priest, puberty, Saqqara, stela, tomb, Uha
Recently for practice I translated an ancient Egyptian stela on display at the Oriental Institute in Chicago, Illinois. It’s a large and colorful stela of an official named Uha, and it’s unusual in that it contains information about his circumcision. I had never translated a monument with this aspect of the ancient culture, so was interested in seeing what it had to say in the original ancient language.
Along the way I spent some time researching the subject and thought it might be worthwhile to compose an article about it. There is a lot of interesting information out there, and I noted that some of it on the internet is misleading or incorrect. I also was reminded of the polarizing effect the subject of circumcision has on modern people, some of whom are not disturbed by it, some of whom find it “barbaric,” and others who regard the practice as a religious or cultural norm.
My article for the most part will be limited to the subject of circumcision as it pertains to ancient Egypt.
The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the mid fifth century BCE, stated the Egyptians “practise circumcision for the sake of cleanliness, considering it better to be cleanly than comely.” He also wrote: “They [Egyptians] are the only people in the world—they at least, and such as have learnt the practice from them—who use circumcision.”
Were we to take Herodotus at his word, then, we might think circumcision was a universal male practice in ancient Egypt and that the Egyptians invented the practice. But neither case can be stated absolutely. No one knows who first instituted the act of circumcision, and it certainly was not a universal practice among males. Examinations of mummies has shown, however, that circumcision was commonly practiced (Filer 1995: 90) among ancient Egyptian males.
Try as I might, I could find no corroboration that female circumcision was practiced in ancient Egypt. Examinations of female mummies have not revealed evidence of circumcision (Aufderheide 2003: 474). What we can say with a high level of confidence, then, is that circumcision in ancient Egypt was a male practice.
The prevailing evidence shows that circumcision was conducted in the pre-adolescent stage of a male’s life. This is borne out in textual evidence as well as in the examinations of male mummies. As with other African peoples to this day, it was not done in infancy but perhaps in some cases marked an initiation rite between boyhood and manhood. At the same time, there is no extant evidence that circumcision was required for all males; likewise, there is no evidence that circumcision was governed by one’s social class or status (Nunn 2002: 171).
Not even all of the kings appear to have been circumcised, in so far as it is observable on their mummies. Consider Ahmose I (1549-1524 BCE), founder of Dynasty 18 and the New Kingdom:
Mummy of Ahmose I, Dynasty 18
Kings were of course at the peak of social hierarchy, the epitome of manhood, and the divine intermediaries of the gods. It has been speculated that perhaps Ahmose wasn’t circumcised because he was sickly or suffered from hemophilia (Harris & Weeks 1973: 127), but other kings such as Amunhotep I and Amunhotep II also appear not to have been circumcised. The more plausible scenario is that it wasn’t a cultural absolute.
As a museum docent I am sometimes faced with odd or somewhat embarrassing questions. Such questions are often (though not always) posed by children. On display in our Egyptian exhibit at the Field Museum is the unwrapped mummy of a boy who died around 2,500 years ago, at ten to twelve years of age:
Late Period mummy of a boy (Field Museum)
One afternoon I came across a young boy of around seven who was squatting down and studying what he could see below the hands of this mummy. The mummy is so well preserved that his genitals are intact. The young museum visitor looked up at me and asked why this mummified boy was not circumcised. I’ve never paid much attention to what one can see below the mummy’s hands and am not inclined to now, either, but my first thought upon this young boy’s question to me was, Where are this kid’s parents? To cut it short I answered frankly that not everyone was circumcised, and then pretended to be caught up by another group of visitors.
While on the subject of museums, let’s return to the stela of Uha on display at the Oriental Institute:
Stela of Uha, First Intermediate Period (Oriental Institute)
The stela comes from the site of Nag ed-Deir and dates to the First Intermediate Period (c. 2100 BCE). It shows Uha in his kilt and broadcollar and clutching a sekhem-scepter (emblem of power); behind Uha, in diminutive size, stands his wife Henutsen, who affectionately clasps Uha’s hand. Uha carries numerous titles in the lengthy horizontal inscription, among them seal bearer of the king and lector priest. The fourth and fifth registers are specific to his circumcision.
The translation is my own but can be compared against the published translation in the O.I.’s companion book to the exhibit (Teeter 2003: 34): iw sab.k Hna s(w) 120 nn.s xaA nn.s xAw im nn AXa im nnw AXa im (“When I was circumcised, along with 120 men, none therein struck, none therein were struck; none therein scratched, none therein were scratched”). Basically Uha is bragging that neither he nor his male companions struggled or had to be forced in their circumcisions. This is a common theme in the few monuments which mention circumcision, but what makes the stela unusual is that Uha was apparently in the company of 120 other men (Hna s[w] 120). Mass circumcisions are otherwise unattested in ancient Egyptian monuments. If such an occasion did occur, it must have been a highly unpleasant sight to behold.
Incidentally, in my preparations for conducting my translation, I broke one of my own rules and turned to the internet, just to see what was out there. It turns out Uha’s stela is easy to find on the web, and there are numerous translations. On several I came across mention that there were “120 men and 120 women” on the day of the mass circumcision. This is incorrect. While the stela clearly mentions the figure of 120 men, no women are mentioned in the group. As noted earlier, evidence is lacking that females underwent circumcision in ancient Egypt.
Considering the impressive length of pharaonic history and the practically countless inscribed monuments, circumcision is not well represented historically in ancient Egypt. There are only two monuments which specifically depict the act of circumcision: in the tomb of Ankhmahor at Saqqara and in the temple precinct of Mut at Karnak (Filer 1995: 90). Other monuments such as Uha’s mention circumcision but do not depict it. Circumcision is not mentioned in the extant medical papyri (ibid).
The depiction in Ankhmahor’s tomb is worth reviewing. Dating to Dynasty 6 and specifically to the reign of King Teti (2355-2343 BCE), it is the oldest extant depiction of the act of circumcision from ancient Egypt. Here is a line-art version of the depiction, which appears on the east thickness of a doorway in the tomb:
Tomb relief showing circumcision, Saqqara
Ankhmahor was a high-ranking official whose tomb was small but beautifully decorated with relief carvings. It is found in the pyramid complex of Teti. His titles included overseer of all the king’s works, overseer of the two treasuries, priest of Maat, and lector priest (Kanawati, N. & A. Hassan 1997: 11-12).
The above scene depicts two men being circumcised. The scene has been interpreted in different ways but the nude male at right is surmounted by an inscription in which he says: sin wnnt r mnx (“Sever, indeed, thoroughly”). The man kneeling before him says: iw(.i) r irt r nDm (“I will proceed carefully”).
All our male readers are probably squirming by now. At left is one man restraining the nude male there, while another kneels before him to preform the procedure. The glyphs in front of the kneeling man identify him as a Hm-kA, mortuary priest. In the inscription he is telling the man doing the restraining: nDr sw m rdi dbA.f (“Hold him fast. Do not let him faint”). The restrainer says: iri.i r Hst.k (“I will do as you wish”).
(These translations are from Kanawati, N. & A. Hassan 1997: 49.)
The nude male at left is not given lines. Presumably he is doing everything he can not to pass out. This is understandable.
As I mentioned, the depiction has been interpreted in different ways. Below the elbows of the restrained male at left is the word sb, which is typically translated as “circumcise.” The Egyptologist Ann Macy Roth has plausibly argued that this word should act together with Hm-kA to form the sentence sbt Hm-kA (“Circumcising the mortuary priest”), which makes the restrained nude male at left the mortuary priest (Nunn 2002: 170-171).
Roth’s proposal makes sense because it’s otherwise confusing why a mortuary priest should be performing circumcisions. The scene as a whole is somewhat odd in its context because, while the tomb of Ankhmahor shows other scenes involving medical care, the circumcision depiction is isolated on a door thickness and does not even include Ankhmahor. It’s been argued that one or both of the nude males might be sons of Ankhmahor, who are depicted elsewhere in the tomb.
In an entirely different interpretation, it’s been stated that perhaps the man at right isn’t being circumcised but is undergoing a procedure to correct phimosis. In other cases it’s been argued that the same man is undergoing a procedure to numb his penis prior to being circumcised.
So it remains unclear under what circumstances a male in ancient Egypt would be circumcised. While it seems clear Herodotus’ accounts of the practice are exaggerated, the fact is many men were circumcised (again, evidently in late puberty). It might come down to how some people in ancient Egypt viewed purity rites. To the ancient Egyptians purity was not so much a state of mind as it was a physical phenomenon (Teeter 2011: 32). There are scattered references that circumcision was an act of physical purity (ibid), and I personally have always wondered if it was a preference or perhaps an obligation among men in certain priestly classes. Recall that in both our examples here—Uha and Ankmahor—these men carried priestly titles.
Remember that in both ancient times and modern, circumcision has been a fixed cultural feature and an act of initiation into manhood. While some modern people find the practice “barbaric,” it is not one’s place to force his or her attitudes into someone else’s cultural or religious beliefs.
Thanks for reading. As always, I welcome comments.
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Aufderheide, Arthur C. The Scientific Study of Mummies. 2003.
Filer, Joyce. Disease. 1995.
Harris, James E. and Kent Weeks. X-Raying the Pharaohs.1973.
Kanawati, N. and A. Hassan. The Teti Cemetery at Saqqara: Volume II: The Tomb of Ankhmahor. 1997.
Nunn, John F. Ancient Egyptian Medicine. 2002.
Teeter, Emily: Ancient Egypt: Treasures from the Collection of the Oriental Institute University of Chicago. 2003.
—Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt. 2011.
Thank you for that refreshingly unbiased description. (A coloured papyrus version of the Saqqara tomb relief, probably mass-produced for tourists, has become a defining motif of fanatically, and even fetishistically, pro-circumcision people.)
I would challenge “While some modern people find the practice “barbaric,” it is not one’s place to force his or her attitudes into someone else’s cultural or religious beliefs.”.
Non-judgemental cultural relativism is a fine principle when studying other cultures. That does not mean that human rights do not inhere in all humans, regardless of their community’s or their parents’ culture. Those rights include the right to bodily autonomy. This is reflected in the culture and laws of the developed world, so that it is not lawful to tattoo a child, to pierce a child’s genitals or to cut any other normal, healthy functional, non-renewing part off a child’s body. The infant male foreskin remains an irrational, anomalous and anachronistic exception to this admirable general rule.
Thanks for reading, Hugh7. I’m familiar with the colored version of the circumcision scene from Ankhmahor’s tomb and considered using it, but in the end I decided it was too “touristy” (not to mention the fact that most of the hieroglyphic inscription is missing from it). Please understand I’m not really trying to take a position on the modern debates surrounding circumcision. To be frank it isn’t of great concern to me and I don’t understand all of the heated discourse surrounding it. My article was chiefly written to present what we know about circumcision as practiced in pharaonic Egypt. I’m a history guy and that’s what my blog is about.
Fair enough, but modern “medical” infant male genital cutting has flowed down in an unbroken tradition from the Egyptian variety by way of the Jews, and probably goes back earlier and further south into Africa. Only the ostensible reasons given for doing it have changed, but always to avert the worst fears of each age, from divine wrath to ritual uncleanness, to the many ills masturbation was thought to cause, to STDs, to cancer, to AIDS. I have heard that Egyptian genital cutting was an attempt to imitate the “immortality” of snakes via the shedding of their skins. Can you comment on that claim?
The idea of the “immorality of snakes” sounds more like a Judeo-Christian precept than an ancient Egyptian one. I’ve never encountered that in either the professional literature or on the monuments I’ve encountered (which are few) that mention circumcision. While snakes certainly could be regarded as a threat in ancient times, of course, they were also revered in Egypt and were often a royal symbol. There are even several snake-headed or -bodied deities (Wadjet probably chief among them). Snakes were not regarded as immoral to the Egyptians and, as far as I know, were not associated with the practice or ritual of circumcision.
Immortality not immorality (Freudian slip perhaps?). Most helpful article. One question, please, is there clear evidence non priestly Egyptians, other than Pharaohs were sometimes circumcised?
A brief response to Irv W, the Mernepteh stele’s reference to Israel doesn’t give time for escapees of Akhenaten to firm an enduring nation that thrives despite the Pharaoh’s ravages. Freud’s fiction is too late, the Exodus was earlier and Akhenaten a reaction to not a cause of Hebrew monotheism.
Good article. My thought is that there was a break away group in Egypt that became the Hebrews. They borrowed certain rituals from Egypt. Certainly monotheism, probably the 10 commandments from book of the dead and took this practice as a way of saying once you’re in you can never go back. My theory is that the jewish people were formed by a priest to Akenaten. We call him Moses ( an egyptian name) who after Akenaten died or was killed got out of town with a few followers (exodus) and made circumcision a brand forever. really seems reasonable to me that after they first few left they created an epic story of plagues etc to give the bird to Egypt. The exodus story is clearly a tale of heroes and as all stories from the region do, they borrow heavily from each other. Makes more sense than seas parting and plagues raining down. Plus where did the jewish slaves get all the gold to make the golden calf. All creation stories are mostly myth, using some fact and background as all writers do and struggling with the age old question of “where did we come from and why.” If you were a priest of the Aten and saw your colleagues being turned on after Akenatens death you would probably get out of town as well.
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Greetings, and thanks for reading. Aside from Strabo I believe Herodotus also mentions female circumcision in pharaonic Egypt. I’ve even read of a Greek papyrus dating to around the first century which mentions the practice for females. But my problem is the apparent complete lack of evidence for female circumcision from the pharaonic culture itself (whereas for males it is reasonably well attested). Historical Greek accounts are always interesting and entertaining but are often full of errors and inventions, so I don’t feel comfortable reaching conclusions from them alone.
Hi am tony from kenya, I have read your article and would like to share some more on this topic .please email me if you can and we can share ideas on this
Greetings, Tony. I must confess I’m not interested in generating private personal correspondence about my articles. But please feel free to use WordPress’s comment features to leave your remarks.
Reblogged this on streeteditions.
Thanks for sharing my article.
Only three first world nations still circumcise a majority of boys: South Korea, where it is usually performed between the ages of 10 and 16, Israel, on the Biblical 8th day, and USA, where the reasons for the prevalence of the practice are unclear. Most circumcised men are Muslims, Africans, Filipinos and Polynesians, for whom it is a defining rite of passage.
Circumcision has become controversial, because there is a growing body of anecdotal evidence that it detracts from the sexual enjoyment and function of one or both genders.
Thanks for the article and the translation and explanation of Ankhmahor’s tomb scene: its quite funny and horrifying at the same time. I could easily believe your hypothesis that this a priestly practice – someone told me that the ancient Mesopotamians believed their gods had no foreskins, so it could easily be an attempt to become ritually pure or mimic the gods. And the Hebrews could easily have adopted the practice from the priesthood during their time in Egypt, and decide to apply it universally to their nation.
I Googled the other circumcision monument you mentioned in Karnak, but that seems to be heavily damaged and doesn’t have any accompanying text, so not very helpful. However, I does occur to me that if this is a priestly practice then perhaps it not surprising that have found so few examples of the monuments depicting circumcision: as I understand it there is very little evidence of ancient Egyptian religious ritual, liturgy or priestly practice, I believe it was all somehow “secret knowledge”? I *think* a lot of what we do know about priestly practice and ritual comes from Greek accounts like Herodotus’s.
As for female circumcision (are we supposed to say “female genital mutilation” these days) I note that modern Egyptians are some of the strongest proponents of this practice in the world, with an estimated 90% of Egyptian women circumcised. This seems to be a ultimately a cultural rather than religious practice (Islam only requires that men are circumcised), so I can’t help wondering if it goes back to ancient times?
Thanks for reading. I have no idea what the “politically correct” term is for female circumcision, and it’s not much of an interest to me. I study history, and that’s what I love. I try to keep the comments to this article relevant to the subject matter, so I’ve actually deleted quite a few comments from activists trying to introduce their own modern socio-political views on circumcision. They’re free to start their own blogs.
But on the subject of ancient Egyptian religion, you might be surprised by how much we do know. We certainly will never have a full understanding of their religion, but countless texts written on tomb walls, temple walls, statues, stelae, papyri, and ostraca have provided us with a wealth of information. We can piece together a level of understanding, right down to the prayers they recited and the hymns they sang. But for whatever reason circumcision is not well represented in the textual record. It may have been of little importance to most men who underwent it, while others such as Uha may have used the practice as bragging rites for not flinching or crying or screaming. I think that would’ve been my reaction had I experienced it on the cusp of adolescence!
You spoke of mass circumcision, which was intriguing, because it matches the Biblical verses if Genesis 17: v. 23, and Genesis 34:24. Both of those were separate occasions of mass circumcission. Do you think the 120 mass circumcissed, could have pertained to either of those events? Thank you for your article. I enjoyed your research.
It’s interesting to ponder how these great societies influenced one another. There certainly was plenty of cross-cultural transference. This stela I translated at the Oriental Institute dates to around 2100 BCE, so that in itself would present a problem in trying to establish connections with early Judaism. The earliest certain evidence we have for a people called “Israel” dates to about 1200 BCE, so that’s a lengthy 900 years after the time of Uha and his circumcision in Egypt. The Hebrews simply didn’t exist yet. But we can say with a high level of certainty that ancient Egypt had great influence on the development of nascent Judaism, including cultural practices. So it’s possible a practice such as circumcision arrived from Egypt to become a cultural norm in Judaism, but as I understand the reality, the emergence of circumcision and its critical importance to Judaism is not well understood.
Great article; I would like to submit to your attention te following book: Archaeology, History and Science: Integrating Approaches to Ancient Materials, written by Marcos Martinón-Torres &Thilo Rehren. There’s a preview on googlebooks, there’s a lot of material concerning the flint in ancient Egypt, used both for cutting the umbilical cord and in circumcision.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I’m definitely going to check it out.
Thank you for your article. However, it is uncertain if the depiction in the tomb of Ankhmahor, or the stela reference circumcision. Another interpretation was proposed by Grunert (S. Grunert, ‘Nich nur sauber, sondern rein. Rituelle Reinigungsanweisungen aus dem Grab des Anchmahor in Saqqara’, SAK 30 (2002), 136-151.) who convincingly proposes the term s-ab to refer to the removal of pubic hair. This practice (as circumcision) is also mentioned by Herodotus. Certainly, there is no doubt that circumcision was practiced in ancient Egypt. Yet, it seems likely that this stela, and relief do not refer to it.
Thanks for reading. I appreciate your input. I wish my German weren’t so rudimentary; I used to be able to read it. I would like to read the Grunert paper. I don’t know that his paper alone can overturn the overall consensus, yet I’m aware that some of these terms are still argued. Grunert’s argument really wouldn’t work for the Uha stela that was the inspiration for my article, as it talks about Uha’s boasting that neither he nor his fellows struck or were struck during the event (i.e., none of them fought it off). That doesn’t make sense for just shaving the pubes. In the mastaba of Niankhkhanum and Khnumhotep in Saqqara, there is a whole register of men being groomed, and one scene shows a man having his pubes shaved. In all cases, the act of shaving is referred to by the word SaK. This is a Dynasty 5 tomb (possibly the reign of Niuserre). If you look at the Ankhmahor relief, the squatting man at right is clearly holding the man’s penis and applying the tool to that organ. On the weight of evidence I think this is, indeed, circumcision. Do you have a link or source for the Grunert paper? I’d still like to give it a go.
Oh, and thanks for your thoughtful and insightful comment. I field so many comments from people steeped in nonsensical woo, and so many in this article from people complaining about circumcision, that it’s nice to read a more academically inclined response.
Thank you for your informative post. I was especially interested in reading your translation of the text accompanying the circumcision scene in Ankh-Ma-Hor’s tomb. You mentioned that you are not aware of evidence of female circumcision. I’d like to share with you something that a private guide told me when I engaged her to take me to all the open tombs at Saqqara in 2017.
One of the tombs we went inside was the one of Ankh-Ma-Hor. I saw firsthand the circumcision scene that you showed the line art for. After my guide pointed it out to me, she then showed me the line BELOW it, and she said that she believed that lower line was evidence of female circumcision. She pointed out that one of the women in that scene was lifting her skirt, as if preparing for her turn, and discussed other reasons why she believed it showed female circumcision.
In Egypt, all licensed tour guides (including mine) hold college degrees in Egyptology, so I do believe she was capable of having an informed opinion on how to interpret the scene. That said, I realize that other interpretations may be possible for the scene we were looking at.
Thanks for this comment, too. I’m a little confused, however, because there is no scene below the circumcision scene in Ankhmahor’s Saqqara tomb. The wall below it is blank. I looked at numerous scenes from the tomb and can’t find one matching that description. If the tour guide was a college-trained individual, she would know the research does not favor female circumcision in dynastic Egypt. Perhaps she was entertaining a personal opinion during her work, but a careful guide is supposed to be crystal clear when personal opinions are voiced. If you wish, please feel free to post a link to the scene, if you happen to come across it.
When I initially looked at the circumcision scene in the tomb of Ankh-Ma-Hor, one thing that came to mind was to wonder which was older, the ancient Egypt practice or the descendants-of-Abraham practice.
Both the Jews and the Arabs trace their lineage to Abraham: the Jews through Isaac, and the Arabs through Ishmael. Both attribute Abraham’s covenant with God as being the origin of their use of ritual circumcision. The Biblical version of the story is in Genesis 17.
I did some cursory digging into Abraham’s history, and the sources I found suggest that Biblical scholars believe he was born around 2,000 BCE. He was living in modern-day Iraq at the time he made his covenant with Yahweh. Contrast that with the age of Ankh-Ma-Hor’s tomb (attributed to approximately 2,340 BCE), and it would seem that male circumcision was already being done in Egypt 300 years before Abraham was born.
There was certainly back-and-forth (both trading and military) between the Asians and the Egyptians in ancient times. It’s plausible, I think, the circumcision may have begun in Egypt but been transmitted to Asians (including Abraham and his descendants) at some point.
Thanks for reading and I appreciate your comment. Care must be taken in interpreting the biblical stories as historically valid. For example, there is no evidence the literal figure of Abraham ever existed. The Bible is not a history book but was devised as a means to record a people;s values and traditions. The Egyptian state was founded around 3100 BCE, and who knows how long circumcision was performed in their society before that (prehistory). We start to see tangible evidence developing for a proto-Hebrew culture around 1200 BCE but not earlier. These are archaeological and textual facts, and they are how I guide my understanding.
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