Endnote 3 – Circumcision

Our oldest textual reference to the operation is an Egyptian inscription from 2300 B.C.E. A man boasts, “When I was circumcised, together with one hundred and twenty men, there was none thereof who hit out” (trans. by John A. Wilson in James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament [Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969], p. 326). Our first graphic depiction of the operation also comes from Egypt, from a bas relief at Saqqara dated to about 2400 B.C.E.