Endnote 10 – Why Did Joseph Shave?

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.