Why Did Joseph Shave? - The BAS Library

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036

Everyone knows the Biblical story of Joseph (Genesis 37, 39–50). As a young lad he has dreams that predict his dominance over his brothers and parents. In retaliation, his brothers discuss killing him but instead sell him to traders who bring him down to Egypt, where he becomes servant to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh’s guard. Potiphar’s wife finds Joseph attractive and attempts to seduce him, but he rejects her. In return, she accuses Joseph of making advances and has him put in prison. While there, Joseph interprets the dreams of two fellow prisoners, foretelling their future. Two years later Pharaoh, too, begins to dream strange dreams, and Joseph is brought out of prison to interpret them:

Then Pharaoh sent and summoned Joseph and they rushed him from the dungeon, and he shaved and changed his clothes, and he came in to Pharaoh.

(Genesis 41:14)

Why did he shave? And what did he shave? And why does the text bother to mention it? I propose that this bit of tangential information is provided by a Biblical author who was familiar with the realia of the Egyptian court and of Egyptian mores.¹

Most people in ancient Mesopotamia did not shave. A relief from the audience hall of Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh² shows in exquisite detail the fall of the Judean city of Lachish to the Assyrian armies in 701 B.C.E. It depicts the Assyrian king (whose head is unfortunately defaced, though the beard is still visible), seated on his throne, receiving his chief minister (perhaps the “Tartan” mentioned in 2 Kings 18:17) and other officers from his army. Behind them, Jews 037from Lachish are shown bowing in submission. The Jews and the Assyrians are all in full beard. Behind the throne, two eunuchs fan the king. Their clean-shaven appearance makes them stand out.

In contrast to the majority of peoples in the ancient Near East, ancient Egyptians were clean shaven. At least from the time of the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 B.C.E.), the custom among men was to shave beard and mustache, and wear a false goatee on special occasions.³ Foreigners can be distinguished from native Egyptians in many Egyptian tomb paintings by the presence of full beards, for example. In a mural from the tomb of Beni Hasan, a caravan of bearded foreign traders brings eye-paint to Egypt (c. 1890 B.C.E.).

By shaving his beard, Joseph immediately transforms himself from a foreigner to an Egyptian. This change foreshadows Joseph’s acceptance at court, as well as the fact that later Joseph’s brothers will fail to recognize him, taking him for an Egyptian.

More than this, I believe not only that Joseph shaved his beard and mustache, but that he shaved his entire body. In other words, I suggest that Joseph is depicted taking on the shaved body of the priesthood.

In ancient Egypt, priests had to be physically pure (w‘b) before entering a temple.⁴ Indeed, the very word for the most common category of priest is “pure one” (w‘b).⁵ Texts found on doors and lintels of Egyptian temples dictate the requirements of those who would enter. A text on the door of the temple 038of Horus at Edfu, for example, forbade those who were not “pure” (w‘b) from entering.⁶

O prophets of the temple of Horus at Edfu, O powerful fathers of God, O Chaplain of the Golden Falcon … O, pure priest of the god at Edfu, and whoever enters through this door. Let him keep himself from entering in a state of impurity, for the god loves purity more than a thousand pieces of gold.⁷

On the side door of the same temple was the added injunction: “Oh priests … you who enter to the gods … in the temple. Do not deal wrongfully, do not enter when unclean …”⁸

In Egypt, being physically “pure” or “clean” included having the entire body shaved.⁹ Priests are easy to identify in Egyptian statues and bas-reliefs. They are the ones shown with shaved heads and beards. A tomb painting of Inherkhau, a foreman at the necropolis of Deir el-Medina on the West Bank at Luxor (c. 1194–1156 B.C.E.), depicts a family grouping showing Inherkhau, his wife and four small children. Another man is with them, presenting an offering table. According to the Egyptian custom, he and the other man are beardless, but each is shown with a full head of thick, black shoulder-length hair.¹⁰ Another scene shows him and his wife being serenaded by a priest. In contrast to Inherkhau, the priest is shown with the shaven head and the shaven-but-painted eyebrow of the priesthood.

Part of being “clean” or “pure” was also being circumcised. Circumcision was common in ancient Egypt and was required for the priesthood. The gatekeepers of the Isis Temple in Philae were enjoined to admit only those who were “pure,” (w‘b), and to prevent “the donkey, the hound, the uncircumcised (‘w‘) and the goat” from entering the temple.¹¹ The custom of circumcision goes 039back to earliest times.¹² A puberty-aged youth’s circumcision is depicted in a scene from the Sixth Dynasty (c. 2340–2140 B.C.E.) tomb of Ankh-ma-Hor at Saqqara.¹³

The laity and the unclean were not permitted to enter the temple. Perhaps because of their monthly menses, women were considered impure at all times, and priests were expected to abstain from sexual activity during the period of their priesthood.¹⁴ A text from the temple at Edfu admonishes the priests “not to frequent the place of women, not to do what should not be done there.”¹⁵ Priestesses served as musicians and singers in the temple, but serenaded the god from the doorway.¹⁶ Only male priests, the “pure ones,” could actually enter into the inner rooms of the gods’ sanctuaries to feed, bathe and dress their cult statues. This was the situation from earliest times, up to and including the Ptolemaic period. Herodotus, writing in the Persian period (484–430 B.C.E.), tells us that, even in his day, priests who entered the temple were circumcised and had the hair of their entire body shaved. They also abstained from fish.¹⁷

They [Egyptian priests] are beyond measure religious, more than [those of] any other nation; and these are among their customs: … They are especially careful to wear newly washed linen raiment. They practice circumcision for cleanliness sake; for they set cleanliness above seemliness. Their priests shave the whole body every other day, that no lice or aught else that is foul may infest them in their service of the gods … They may not eat fish.

(Herodotus, History II:37)

During the Ptolemaic period, a fine of 1,000 drachmas was required of temple priests who were found not to have been completely shaved.¹⁸

Egypt was not the only civilization that required those entering the temples to be completely shaven. The Akkadian term gullubu, literally “shaven,” refers 040to a type of priest,¹⁹ and the installation ceremony of the high priestess of Baal at Emar (modern Syria) included a day set aside for shaving her, probably her entire body.²⁰

Even the Levites of ancient Israel had to be completely shaved in order to participate in the sacrificial service:

Take the Levites from among the Israelites and cleanse them. Thus you shall do to them, to cleanse them: sprinkle the water of purification on them, have them shave their whole body with a razor and wash their clothes, and so cleanse themselves.²¹

(Numbers 8:6–7)

If being shaven and circumcised was necessary before entering an Egyptian temple, then one would expect it to have been necessary before entering into the inner chambers of Pharaoh’s palace, since Pharaoh, too, was a god and his palace a temple. Pharaoh was primarily the god Horus, the all-powerful owner of the soil and its resources, responsible for the overflow of the Nile, the rising of the sun, as well as the birth of living beings and plants.²² He was also the physical son of the sun-god, Re, the state god of Egypt and the natural mediator between mankind and the gods.²³

Because of Pharaoh’s divine character, his palace was a temple. Although it contained the normal qualities of an Egyptian home (living quarters, harem quarters, kitchen, bathrooms, gardens) and the normal qualities of a state administrative center (offices, archives, treasuries, libraries), the palace was primarily the sanctuary for the god-king.²⁴ It contained a chapel and a cult platform for royal ceremonies when Pharaoh appeared in festivals, either alone or with other royal gods: Horus (the divine form of himself), and Nechbet and Wadjet (patronesses and guardians of Upper and Lower Egypt respectively).

That this degree of cleanliness (that is, circumcision, the removal of all body hair and abstaining from fish) was required before entering the inner cult rooms of the palace is amply demonstrated by the Victory Stele of King Piye. King Piye was a Kushite (Nubian) ruler who conquered the Nile Valley in the late eighth century B.C.E. King Piye’s 041famous Victory Stele recounts the submission of several Egyptian rulers to him:

At dawn the next day there came the two rulers of Upper Egypt and the two rulers of Lower Egypt, the uraeus wearers, to kiss the ground to the might of his majesty [King Piye]. Now the kings and counts of Lower Egypt who came to see his majesty’s beauty, their legs were the legs of women. They could not enter the palace because they were uncircumcised (‘m‘) and were eaters of fish, which is an abomination to the palace. But King Namart entered the palace because he was pure (w‘b) and did not eat fish. The three stood there while the one entered the palace.²⁵

Those who were allowed to enter the palace were thus distinguished from those who were not allowed entry. King Namart could enter because he was pure (w‘b), implying he was shaved. In addition, he was circumcised and did not eat fish.

The requirements for entering the palace to approach King Piye echo the requirements of those allowed to enter the temples to approach the gods. Both those who would enter the temples and those who would enter the palace needed to be circumcised and “pure” (wa‘ab), that is, shaved. (Both needed to abstain from fish.) It seems possible, therefore, that, like the w‘b priest entering the temple and like King Namart entering the palace, Joseph, too, would have to have had his entire body shaved in order to enter the inner reaches of the palace where the king held court. As for the requirement of circumcision, it was not a problem. Joseph had been circumcised when he was eight days old (Genesis 17:12).²⁶

Endnotes

For discussions of the sources and composition history of the Joseph story, see the commentaries. For studies of its Egyptian background, see, in addition to the commentaries, D.B. Redford, A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (Genesis 37–50) Vetus Testamentum Supplements 20 (Leiden: Brill, 1970), pp. 189–243; J. Vergote, Joseph en Égypt (Louvain, 1959); idem. “‘Joseph en Egypte’: 25 Ans Apres,” in S. Israelit-Groll, ed., Pharaonic Egypt: The Bible and Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1985), pp. 289–306; W. Dietrich, “Die Josephserzählung als Novelle und Geschichts-schribung: Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Pentateuchfrage,” Biblisch-Theologische Studien 14 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1989), pp. 60–69. None of these works mention the Egyptian background of Joseph’s shaving.

David Ussishkin, The Conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib (Tel Aviv: The Institute of Archaeology, 1982), Fig. 71, pp. 88–89.

A.M. Blackman, “Purification (Egyptian),” in A.B. Lloyd, ed., Gods, Priests, and Men: Studies in the Religion of Pharaonic Egypt by Aylward M. Blackman (London: Kegan Paul International, 1998), pp. 3–21, esp. p. 6.

S. Sauneron, The Priests of Ancient Egypt, tr. David Lorton, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 2000), pp. 35–40.

For a discussion of the types of Egyptian priests and their ranks, see my The Priest and the Great King: Temple Palace Relations in the Persian Empire. Biblical and Judaic Studies from the University of California, San Diego 10 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004), pp. 56–59.

M. Weinfeld, “Instructions for Temple Visitors in the Bible and in Ancient Egypt,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 28 (Egyptological Studies) (1982), pp. 224–250. The populace at large could not enter, only the priests Sauneron, The Priests of Ancient Egypt, pp. 35–40.

M. Alliot, Le Culte D’Horus Á Edfou au Temps des Ptoléméés (Cairo: Institut Français d’archéologie Orientale Bibliothéque d’Étude, Vol. 22, 1949), pp. 184–185.

Ibid.

Sauneron, The Priests of Ancient Egypt, pp. 35–40.

10.

M. Andrews, “The Tomb of Foreman Inherkhau,” www.touregypt.net/featurestories/inherkhaut.htm. Male beauty (as shown by the representations of Pharaoh) included a full head of thick, black shoulder-length hair (L. Green, “Beauty,” Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt [Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001], pp. 167–171). Medical papyri show the concern for this standard of beauty. They provide numerous recipes for hair tonics, both to cover the grey in order to achieve the desired deep black, as well as to treat thinning hair and spotted or male-pattern baldness. See H. Kamal, A Dictionary of Pharaonic Medicine (Cairo: The National Publication House, 1967), pp. 213–214. On the use of wigs to achieve this standard of beauty, see below, note 14.

11.

H. Junker, “Vorschriften für den tempelkult in Philä,” Analecta Biblica 12 (1956), pp. 151–160. When the reference is to adult males, this is the only interpretation that is appropriate to all the occurrences. See W. Westendorf, “Noch einmal: Das Wort ‘m‘ — Knabe/Jüngling/Unbeschnittener/Unreiner,” Göttinger Miszellen 206 (2005), pp. 103–110; Pace E. Feucht, “Pharaonische Beschneidung,” in S. Meyer, Egypt—Temple of the Whole World/ Ágypten—Tempel der Gesamten Welt: Studies in Honour of Jan Assmann (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 81–94.

12.

Male circumcision was common among the ancient Egyptians, boys being circumcised in groups when they reached puberty. See “Circumcision—Who Did It, Who Didn’t and Why,” BAR 20:04, and C. de Wit, “La Circoncision chez les anciens Egyptiens,” Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 90 (1972), pp. 41–48, and more recently, W. Westendorf, “Noch einmal: Das Wort ‘m‘.”

13.

The Sixth Dynasty (c. 2340–2140 B.C.E.) tomb of Ankh-ma-Hor at Saqqara, www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/larue.html

14.

Hilary Wilson, “The Priest,” in Wilson, People of the Pharaohs: From Peasant to Courtier (London: Michael O’Mara Books Ltd., 1997), pp. 97–119, esp. p. 106. Priests were not resident in the temple, but were organized into phyles, taking their turn in the temple only every fourth month. The rest of the time they lived normal lives with their families. See Blackman, “Purification (Egyptian),” p. 10; D. Meeks, “Pureté et Impureté: Égypte,” in Dictionnaire de la Bible—Supplément, vol. 9 (Paris, 1979), pp. 430–451, esp. p. 441.

The fact that most men rotated in and out of the priesthood meant that they were shaved bald one month out of every four—and this at a time when the standard of male beauty was deep black shoulder-length hair! (See endnote 10.) For those men (and this was most upper class men) the only way to achieve the standard of male beauty was the wig. Wigs were thus the fashion, and were worn on public occasions and at banquets, often woven into the existing short hair. See J. Fletcher, “Hair,” British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (London: British Museum Press, 1995), pp. 117–118.

15.

Alliot, Le Culte D’Horus Á Edfou, p. 186.

16.

This is also true of “God’s Wife”, the daughter of either the high priest of Amun who ruled Thebes or (from the 23rd dynasty) of the king. After the fall of the 20th dynasty, these Wives of the God ruled Thebes themselves. See Blackman, “Priest, Priesthood (Egyptian),” pp. 125–126.

17.

On the relationship between “cleanliness” and food prohibitions, see P. Galpaz-Feller, “The Stela of King Piye: A Brief Consideration of ‘Clean’ and ‘Unclean’ in Ancient Egypt and the Bible,” Revue Biblique (1995), pp. 506–521.

18.

Sauneron, The Priests of Ancient Egypt, p. 37, citing Berlin Griechische Urkunden vol. V, p. 76.

19.

Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, “Gullubu,” G, p. 129.

20.

D.E. Fleming, The Installation of Baal’s High Priestess at Emar, Harvard Semitic Studies 42 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), pp. 180–182.

21.

On the shaving of Levites, see B.A. Levine, Numbers 1–20, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1993), pp. 273–274. On shaving rites in general, see S.M. Olyan, “What Do Shaving Rites Accomplish?”

22.

S. Sauneron, The Priests of Ancient Egypt, 29.

23.

A. Blackman, “Priest, Priesthood (Egyptian),” in Lloyd, ed., Gods, Priests, and Men, pp. 117–144, esp. pp. 117–118.

24.

“Palast” Lexikon der Ägyptologie.Hrsg. von Wolfgang Helck und Eberhard Otto (Wiesbaden,O. Harrassowitz,1972), p. 643.

25.

Miriam Lichtheim, “The Victory Stela of King Piye,” in Lichtheim, ed., Ancient Egyptian Literature: Vol III—The Late Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 66–84.

26.

This article has benefited immensely from conversations with Aakyo Eyma, Eugene Cruz-Uribe, Donald Redford, Joachim Friedrich Quack, and Penina Galpaz-Feller. In addition, Professor Eyma has read an early version of the manuscript and made invaluable suggestions. All remaining errors are my own.