History
Main article: History of male circumcision
Circumcision is the world's oldest planned surgical procedure, suggested by anatomist and hyperdiffusionist historian Grafton Elliot Smith to be over 15,000 years old, pre-dating recorded history. There is no firm consensus as to how it came to be practiced worldwide. One theory is that it began in one geographic area and spread from there; another is that several different cultural groups began its practice independently. In his 1891 work History of Circumcision, physician Peter Charles Remondino suggested that it began as a less severe form of emasculating a captured enemy: penectomy or castration would likely have been fatal, while some form of circumcision would permanently mark the defeated yet leave him alive to serve as a slave.[24][72]
The history of the migration and evolution of the practice of circumcision is followed mainly through the cultures and peoples in two separate regions. In the lands south and east of the Mediterranean, starting with Sudan and Ethiopia, the procedure was practiced by the ancient Egyptians and the Semites, and then by the Jews and Muslims, with whom the practice traveled to and was adopted by the Bantu Africans. In Oceania, circumcision is practiced by the Australian Aborigines and Polynesians.[72] There is also evidence that circumcision was practiced among the Aztec and Mayan civilizations in the Americas,[1] but little detail is available about its history.[24][66]
Middle East, Africa and Europe
Evidence suggests that circumcision was practiced in the Arabian Peninsula by the 4th millennium BCE, when the Sumerians and theSemites moved into the area that is modern-day Iraq.[66] The earliest historical record of circumcision comes from Egypt, in the form of an image of the circumcision of an adult carved into the tomb of Ankh-Mahor at Saqqara, dating to about 2400–2300 BCE. Circumcision was done by the Egyptians possibly for hygienic reasons, but also was part of their obsession with purity and was associated with spiritual and intellectual development. No well-accepted theory explains the significance of circumcision to the Egyptians, but it appears to have been endowed with great honor and importance as a rite of passage into adulthood, performed in a public ceremony emphasizing the continuation of family generations and fertility. It may have been a mark of distinction for the elite: the Egyptian Book of the Dead describes the sun god Ra as having circumcised himself.[24][72]
Circumcision features prominently in the Hebrew Bible. The narrative in Genesis chapter 17 describes the circumcision of Abraham and his relatives and slaves, making him the first named individual to undergo the procedure. In the same chapter, Abraham's descendants are commanded to circumcise their sons on the eighth day of life. Many generations later, Moses was raised by the Egyptian elite, so circumcision was doubtless familiar to him. For the Jews of the time, circumcision was not as much a spiritual act as it was a physical sign of their covenant with God, and a prerequisite for the fulfillment of the commandment to produce offspring. In addition to proposing that circumcision was taken up by the Jews purely as a religious mandate, scholars have suggested that Judaism's patriarchs and their followers adopted circumcision to make penile hygiene easier in hot, sandy climates; as a rite of passage into adulthood; or as a form of blood sacrifice.[66][72][73]
Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East in the 4th century BCE, and in the following centuries ancient Greek cultures and values came to the Middle East. The Greeks abhorred circumcision, making life for circumcised Jews living among the Greeks (and later the Romans) very difficult. Antiochus Epiphanes outlawed circumcision, as did Hadrian, which helped cause the Bar Kokhba revolt. During this period in history, Jewish circumcision called for the removal of only a part of the prepuce, and some Hellenized Jews attempted to look uncircumcised by stretching the extant parts of their foreskins. This was considered by the Jewish leaders to be a serious problem, and during the 2nd century CE they changed the requirements of Jewish circumcision to call for the complete removal of the foreskin, emphasizing the Jewish view of circumcision as intended to be not just the fulfillment of a Biblical commandment but also an essential and permanent mark of membership in a people.[72][73]
A narrative in the Christian Gospel of Luke makes a brief mention of the circumcision of Jesus, but the subject of physical circumcision itself is not part of the received teachings ofJesus. Paul the Apostle reinterpreted circumcision as a spiritual concept, arguing the physical one to be no longer necessary. The teaching that physical circumcision was unnecessary for membership in a divine covenant was instrumental in the separation of Christianity from Judaism. Although it is not explicitly mentioned in the Quran (early 6th century CE), circumcision is considered essential to Islam, and it is nearly universally performed among Muslims. The practice of circumcision spread across the Middle East, North Africa and Southern Europe with Islam.[74]
Genghis Khan, and the following Yuan Emperors in China forbade Islamic practices such as halal butchering and circumcision.[75][76] This led Chinese Muslims to eventually take an active part in rebelling against the Mongols and installing the more tolerant Ming Dynasty.
The practice of circumcision is thought to have been brought to the Bantu-speaking tribes of Africa by either the Jews after one of their many expulsions from European countries, or by Muslim Moors escaping after the 1492 conquest of Spain. In the second half of the 1st millennium CE, inhabitants from the North East of Africa moved south and encountered groups from Arabia, the Middle East and West Africa. These people moved south and formed what is known today as the Bantu. Bantu tribes were observed to be upholding what was described as Jewish law, including circumcision, in the 16th century. Circumcision and elements of Jewish dietary restrictions are still found among Bantu tribes.[66]
Indigenous peoples of Australia, the Pacific and Americas
Circumcision is practised by some groups amongst Australian Aboriginal peoples, Polynesians, and Native Americans. Little information is available about the origins and history of circumcision among these peoples, compared to circumcision in the Middle East.
For Aboriginal Australians and Polynesians, circumcision likely started as a blood sacrifice and a test of bravery, and became an initiation rite with attendant instruction in manhood in more recent centuries. Often seashells were used to remove the foreskin, and the bleeding was stopped with eucalyptussmoke.[66][77]
Christopher Columbus reported circumcision being practiced by native Americans.[24] It was also practiced by the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans. It probably started among South American tribes as a blood sacrifice or ritual mutilation to test bravery and endurance, and its use later evolved into a rite of initiation.Various reasons have been given for the adoption of circumcision as a practice in different cultures around the world. The oldest documentary evidence for circumcision comes from ancient Egypt.[1] Circumcision was common, although not universal, among ancient Semitic peoples.[2] In the aftermath of the conquests of Alexander the Great, however, Greek dislike of circumcision (they regarded a man as truly "naked" only if his prepuce was retracted) led to a decline in its incidence among many peoples that had previously practiced it.[3]
Circumcision has ancient roots among several ethnic groups in sub-equatorial Africa, and is still performed on adolescent boys to symbolize their transition to warrior status or adulthood.[4]
Origins[edit]
The origin of male circumcision is not known with certainty. It has been variously proposed that it began as a religious sacrifice, as a rite of passage marking a boy's entrance into adulthood, as a form of sympathetic magic to ensure virility or fertility, as a means of enhancing sexual pleasure, as an aid to hygiene where regular bathing was impractical, as a means of marking those of higher social status, as a means of humiliating enemies and slaves by symbolic castration, as a means of differentiating a circumcising group from their non-circumcising neighbors, as a means of discouraging masturbation or other socially proscribed sexual behaviors, as a means of removing "excess" pleasure, as a means of increasing a man's attractiveness to women, as a demonstration of one's ability to endure pain, or as a male counterpart to menstruation or the breaking of the hymen, or to copy the rare natural occurrence of a missing foreskin of an important leader, and as a display of disgust of the smegma produced by the foreskin. Removing the foreskin can prevent or treat a medical condition known as phimosis. It has been suggested that the custom of circumcision gave advantages to tribes that practiced it and thus led to its spread.[5][6][7]
Darby describes these theories as "conflicting", and states that "the only point of agreement among proponents of the various theories is that promoting good health had nothing to do with it."[6][8] Immerman et al. suggest that circumcision causes lowered sexual arousal of pubescent males, and hypothesize that this was a competitive advantage to tribes practising circumcision, leading to its spread.[9] Wilson suggests that circumcision reduces insemination efficiency, reducing a man's capacity for extra-pair fertilizations by impairing sperm competition. Thus, men who display this signal of sexual obedience may gain social benefits if married men are selected to offer social trust and investment preferentially to peers who are less threatening to their paternity.[10] It is possible that circumcision arose independently in different cultures for different reasons.
Africa[edit]
"The distribution of circumcision and initiation rites throughout Africa, and the frequent resemblance between details of ceremonial procedure in areas thousands of miles apart, indicate that the circumcision ritual has an old tradition behind it and in its present form is the result of a long process of development."[11]
African cultural history is conveniently spoken of in terms of language group. The Niger–Congo speakers of today extend from Senegal to Kenya to South Africa and all points between. In the historic period, the Niger–Congo speaking peoples predominantly have and have had male circumcision which occurred in young warrior initiation schools, the schools of Senegal and Gambia being not so very different from those of the Kenyan Gikuyu and South African Zulu. Their common ancestor was a horticultural group five, perhaps seven, thousand years ago from an area of the Cross River in modern Nigeria. From that area a horticultural frontier moved outward into West Africa and the Congo Basin. Certainly the warrior schools with male circumcision were a part of the ancestral society's cultural repertoire.[12]
Male circumcision in East Africa is a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, but is only practiced in some nations (tribes). Some peoples in East Africa do not practice male circumcision (for example the Luo of western Kenya).[12]
Amongst the Gikuyu (Kikuyu) people of Kenya and the Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania, male circumcision has historically been the graduation element of an educational program which taught tribal beliefs, practices, culture, religion and history to youth who were on the verge of becoming full-fledged members of society. The circumcision ceremony was very public, and required a display of courage under the knife in order to maintain the honor and prestige of the young man and his family. The only form of anesthesia was a bath in the cold morning waters of a river, which tended to numb the senses to a minor degree. The youths being circumcised were required to maintain a stoic expression and not to flinch from the pain.[12]
After circumcision, young men became members of the warrior class, and were free to date and marry. The graduants became a fraternity which served together, and continued to have mutual obligation to each other for life.
In the modern context in East Africa, the physical element of male circumcision remains (in the societies that have historically practiced it) but without most of the other accompanying rites, context and programs. For many, the operation is now performed in private on one individual, in a hospital or doctor's office. Anesthesia is often used in such settings. There are tribes however, that do not accept this modernized practice. They insist on circumcision in a group ceremony, and a test of courage at the banks of a river. This more traditional approach is common amongst the Meru and the Kisii tribes of Kenya.[12]
Despite the loss of the rites and ceremonies that accompanied male circumcision in the past, the physical operation remains crucial to personal identity and pride, and acceptance in society. Uncircumcised men in these communities risk being "outed", and subjected to ridicule as "boys". There have been many cases of forced circumcision of men from such communities who are discovered to have escaped the ritual.
In some South African ethnic groups, circumcision has roots in several belief systems, and is performed most of the time on teenage boys:
Ancient world[edit]
Sixth Dynasty (2345–2181 BCE) tomb artwork in Egypt has been thought to be the oldest documentary evidence of circumcision, the most ancient depiction being a bas-relief from the necropolis at Saqqara (c. 2400 BCE) with the inscriptions reading: "The ointment is to make it acceptable." and "Hold him so that he does not fall".[citation needed]
[Anointed Glans after the Elite (elite) had gone circumcision, was soothing, healing, anesthetic and also pleasure enhancing for both Men and Women]
In the oldest written account, by an Egyptian named Uha, in the 23rd century BCE, he describes a mass circumcision and boasts of his ability to stoically endure the pain: "When I was circumcised, together with one hundred and twenty men...there was none thereof who hit out, there was none thereof who was hit, and there was none thereof who scratched and there was none thereof who was scratched."[13]
Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE, wrote that the Egyptians "practise circumcision for the sake of cleanliness, considering it better to be cleanly than comely."[14] Gollaher (2000) considered circumcision in ancient Egypt to be a mark of passage from childhood to adulthood. He mentions that the alteration of the body and ritual of circumcision were supposed to give access to ancient mysteries reserved solely for the initiated. (See also Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 1.15) The content of those mysteries are unclear but are likely to be myths, prayers, and incantations central to Egyptian religion. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, for example, tells of the sun god Ra cutting himself, the blood creating two minor guardian deities. The Egyptologist Emmanuel vicomte de Rougé interpreted this as an act of circumcision.[15] Circumcisions were performed by priests in a public ceremony, using a stone blade. It is thought to have been more popular among the upper echelons of the society, although it was not universal and those lower down the social order are known to have had the procedure done.[16]The Egyptian hieroglyph for "penis" depicts either a circumcised or an erect organ.
Circumcision was also adopted by some Semitic peoples living in or around Egypt. Herodotus reported that circumcision is only practiced by the Egyptians, Colchians, Ethiopians, Phoenicians, the 'Syrians of Palestine', and "the Syrians who dwell about the rivers Thermodon and Parthenius, as well as their neighbours the Macronians and Macrones". He also reports, however, that "the Phoenicians, when they come to have commerce with the Greeks, cease to follow the Egyptians in this custom, and allow their children to remain uncircumcised."[14]
According to Genesis, God told Abraham to circumcise himself, his household and his slaves as an everlasting covenant in their flesh, see also Abrahamic Covenant. Those who were not circumcised were to be "cut off" from their people (Genesis 17:10–14). Covenants in biblical times were often sealed by severing an animal, with the implication that the party who breaks the covenant will suffer a similar fate. In Hebrew, the verb meaning to seal a covenant translates literally as "to cut". It is presumed by Jewish scholars that the removal of the foreskin symbolically represents such a sealing of the covenant.[17] Moses might not have been circumcised; one of his sons was not, nor were some of his followers while traveling through the desert (Joshua 5: 4–7). Moses's wife Zipporah circumcised their son when God threatened to kill Moses (Exodus 4: 24–26).
Hellenistic and Judaic culture[edit]
According to Hodges, ancient Greek aesthetics of the human form considered circumcision a mutilation of a previously perfectly shaped organ. Greek artwork of the period portrayed penises as covered by the foreskin (sometimes in exquisite detail), except in the portrayal of satyrs, lechers, and barbarians.[18] This dislike of the appearance of the circumcised penis led to a decline in the incidence of circumcision among many peoples that had previously practiced it throughout Hellenistic times.
In Egypt, only the priestly caste retained circumcision, and by the 2nd century, the only circumcising groups in the Roman Empire were Jews, Jewish Christians, Egyptian priests, and the Nabatean Arabs. Circumcision was sufficiently rare among non-Jews that being circumcised was considered conclusive evidence of Judaism (or Early Christianity and others derogatorily called Judaizers) in Roman courts—Suetonius in Domitian 12.2 described a court proceeding in which a ninety-year-old man was stripped naked before the court to determine whether he was evading the head tax placed on Jews and Judaizers.[19]
Cultural pressures to circumcise operated throughout the Hellenistic world: when the Judean king John Hyrcanus conquered theIdumeans, he forced them to become circumcised and convert to Judaism, but their ancestors the Edomites had practiced circumcision in pre-Hellenistic times.
Some Jews tried to hide their circumcision status, as told in 1 Maccabees. This was mainly for social and economic benefits and also so that they could exercise in gymnasiumsand compete in sporting events. Techniques for restoring the appearance of an uncircumcised penis were known by the 2nd century BCE. In one such technique, a copper weight (called the Judeum pondum) was hung from the remnants of the circumcised foreskin until, in time, they became sufficiently stretched to cover the glans. The 1st-century writerCelsus described two surgical techniques for foreskin restoration in his medical treatise De Medicina.[20] In one of these, the skin of the penile shaft was loosened by cutting in around the base of the glans. The skin was then stretched over the glans and allowed to heal, giving the appearance of an uncircumcised penis. This was possible because theAbrahamic covenant of circumcision defined in the Bible was a relatively minor circumcision; named milah, this involved cutting off the foreskin that extended beyond the glans. Jewish religious writers denounced such practices as abrogating the covenant of Abraham in 1 Maccabees and the Talmud.[21]
Because of these attempts, and for other reasons, a second more radical step was added to the circumcision procedure. This was added around 140 CE, and was named Brit Peri'ah. In this step, the foreskin was cut further back, to the ridge behind the glans penis, called the coronal sulcus. The inner mucosal tissue was removed by use of a sharp finger nail or implement, including the excising and removal of thefrenulum from the underside of the glans.[22] Later during the Talmudic period (500–625 CE) a third step, known as Metzitzah, began to be practiced. In this step the mohel would suck the blood from the circumcision wound with his mouth to remove what was believed to be bad excess blood. As it actually increases the likelihood of infections such as tuberculosis and venereal diseases, modern day mohels use a glass tube placed over the infant's penis for suction of the blood. In many Jewish ritual circumcisions this step of Metzitzah has been eliminated.[22]
First Maccabees tells us that the Seleucids forbade the practice of brit milah, and punished those who performed it – as well as the infants who underwent it – with death.
The 1st-century Jewish author Philo Judaeus (20 BCE - 50 CE)[23] defended Jewish circumcision on several grounds, including health, cleanliness and fertility.[24] He also thought that circumcision should be done as early as possible as it would not be as likely to be done by someone's own free will. He claimed that the foreskin prevented semen from reaching the vagina and so should be done as a way to increase the nation's population. He also noted that circumcision should be performed as an effective means to reduce sexual pleasure: "The legislators thought good to dock the organ which ministers to such intercourse thus making circumcision the symbol of excision of excessive and superfluous pleasure."[25] There was also division in Pharisaic Judaism between Hillel the Elder and Shammai on the issue of circumcision of proselytes.
The Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135–1204) insisted that faith should be the only reason for circumcision. He recognised that it was "a very hard thing" to have done to oneself but that it was done to "quell all the impulses of matter" and "perfect what is defective morally." Sages at the time had recognised that the foreskin heightened sexual pleasure. Maimonides reasoned that the bleeding and loss of protective covering rendered the penis weakened and in so doing had the effect of reducing a man's lustful thoughts and making sex less pleasurable. He also warned that it is "hard for a woman with whom an uncircumcised man has had sexual intercourse to separate from him."[26][27][28][29]
A 13th-century French disciple of Maimonides, Isaac ben Yediah claimed that circumcision was an effective way of reducing a woman's sexual desire. With a non-circumcised man, he said, she always orgasms first and so her sexual appetite is never fulfilled, but with a circumcised man she receives no pleasure and hardly ever orgasms "because of the great heat and fire burning in her."[30][31]
Flavius Josephus in Jewish Antiquities book 20, chapter 2 records the story of King Izates who having been persuaded by a Jewish merchant named Ananias to embrace the Jewish religion, decided to get circumcised so as to follow Jewish law. Despite being reticent for fear of reprisals from his non-Jewish subjects he was eventually persuaded to do it by a Galileean Jew named Eleazar on the grounds that it was one thing to read the Law and another thing to practice it. Despite his mother Helen and Ananias's fear of the consequences, Josephus said that God looked after Izates and his reign was peaceful and blessed.[32]
Decline in Christianity[edit]
The Council of Jerusalem in Acts of the Apostles 15 addressed the issue of whether circumcision was required of new converts to Christianity. BothSimon Peter and James the Just spoke against requiring circumcision in Gentile converts and the Council ruled that circumcision was not necessary. However, Acts 16 and many references in the Letters of Paul show that the practice was not immediately eliminated. Paul of Tarsus, who was said to be directly responsible for one man's circumcision in Acts 16:1–3 and who appeared to praise Jewish circumcision in Romans 3:2, said that circumcision didn't matter in 1 Corinthians 7:19 and then increasingly turned against the practice, accusing those who promoted circumcision of wanting to make a good showing in the flesh and boasting or glorying in the flesh in Galatians 6:11–13. In a later letter, Philippians 3:2, he is reported as warning Christians to beware the "mutilation" (Strong's G2699). Circumcision was so closely associated with Jewish men that Jewish Christianswere referred to as "those of the circumcision" (e.g. Colossians 3:20) [33] or conversely Christians who were circumcised were referred to as Jewish Christians or Judaizers. These terms (circumcised/uncircumcised) are generally interpreted to mean Jews and Greeks, who were predominant, however it is an oversimplification as 1st-century Iudaea Province also had some Jews who no longer circumcised, and some Greeks (called Proselytes or Judaizers) and others such as Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Arabs who did. According to the Gospel of Thomas saying 53, Jesus says:
- "His disciples said to him, "is circumcision useful or not?" He said to them, "If it were useful, their father would produce children already circumcised from their mother. Rather, the true circumcision in spirit has become profitable in every respect."" SV [34]
Parallels to Thomas 53 are found in Paul's Romans 2:29, Philippians 3:3, 1 Corinthians 7:19, Galatians 6:15, Colossians 2:11–12.
In John's Gospel 7:23 Jesus is reported as giving this response to those who criticized him for healing on the Sabbath:
- Now if a man can be circumcised on the sabbath so that the Law of Moses is not broken, why are you angry with me for making a man whole and complete on a sabbath? ( Jerusalem Bible)
This passage has been seen as a comment on the Rabbinic belief that circumcision heals the penis (Jerusalem Bible, note to John 7:23) or as a criticism of circumcision.[33]
Europeans, with the exception of the Jews, did not practice male circumcision. A rare exception occurred in Visigothic Spain, where during the armed campaign king Wambaordered circumcision of everyone who committed atrocities against the civilian population.[35] The Catholic Church condemned the observance of circumcision as a moral sin and ordered against its practice in the Council of Basel-Florence in 1442.[36] According to UNAIDS, it stated that circumcision was unnecessary for Christians;[37] El-Hout and Khauli, however, regard it as condemnation of the procedure.[38]
In the 18th century, Edward Gibbon referred to circumcision as a "singular mutilation" practised only by Jews and Turks and as "a painful and often dangerous rite" ... (R. Darby)[39]
In 1753 in London there was a proposal for Jewish emancipation. It was furiously opposed by the pamphleteers of the time, who spread the fear that Jewish emancipation meant universal circumcision. Men were urged to protect:
- "the best of Your property" and guard their threatened foreskins(!). It was an extraordinary outpouring of popular beliefs about sex, fears about masculinity and misconceptions about Jews, but also a striking indication of how central to their sexual identity men considered their foreskins at that time. (R.Darby)[39]
These negative attitudes remained well into the 19th century. English explorer Sir Richard Burton observed that "Christendom practically holds circumcision in horror".
Revival in the English-speaking world[edit]
Although negative attitudes prevailed for much of the 19th century, this began to change in the latter part of the century, especially in the Anglosphere. This shift can be seen in the account on circumcision in the Encyclopædia Britannica. In the ninth edition, published in 1876, it discusses the practice as a religious rite among Jews, Muslims, the ancient Egyptians and tribal peoples in various parts of the world. The author of the entry rejected sanitary explanations of the procedure in favour of a religious one: "like other body mutilations ... [it is] of the nature of a representative sacrifice". (R. Darby)[39]
However,
There were two related concerns that led to the widespread adoption of this surgical procedure at this time. The first, was a growing belief within the medical community regarding the efficacy of circumcision in reducing the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, such as syphilis. The second, was the notion that circumcision would lessen the urge towards masturbation, or "self abuse" as it was often called.
1. It was once touted as a cure for paralysis
In the late 1800s, doctors turned to circumcision to "cure" an array of ailments, from childhood fevers to brass poisoning to paralysis. This era was a boom time for genital surgery — women were losing their ovaries to the knife in the name of curing hysteria — but it was an 1870 case that shone the spotlight on circumcision.
Writing in the journal Transactions of the American Medical Association, Lewis Sayre, a professor of orthopedic surgery at Bellevue Hospital Medical College, told the tale of being called to the bedside of a 5-year-old boy whose knees were flexed and paralyzed, preventing him from walking.
During his examination, Sayre discovered that the boy's foreskin had contracted, causing the child great pain. Speculating that the foreskin problem could be the source of the boy's "physical prostration and nervous exhaustion," Sayre conducted a circumcision the next day. In less than two weeks, Sayre reported, the boy was walking again.
Whatever the cause of the boy's paralysis and miraculous cure, the foreskin can occasionally become trapped over the head of the penis, a condition called phimosis. Modern cures include circumcision, manual stretching of the foreskin, or preputioplasty, an operation to widen the foreskin. [Macho Man: 10 Wild Facts About His Body]
2. The foreskin is more complex than you might think
The foreskin isn't just skin. Think of it as more like an eyelid for male genitals. On the inside, the foreskin is made up of mucous membrane, analogous to the inside of the eyelid or the inside of the mouth. It's this moist environment that seems to be responsible for the foreskin's association with sexually transmitted infections. The foreskin also contains a large number of Langerhans cells, a type of immune cell targeted by HIV infection.
Women have a foreskin equivalent, too: the clitoral hood, which protects the clitoris much as the foreskin covers the glans. The foreskin and the clitoral hood, known in gender-neutral terms as the prepuce, evolve from the same tissue in the womb. [10 Odd Facts About the Female Body]
3. The first-recorded circumcision happened in Egypt
As far as we know from the historical record, the land of the pharaohs pioneered circumcision. The earliest reference to the procedure dates back to around 2400 B.C. A bas-relief in the ancient burial ground ofSaqqara depicts a series of medical scenes, including a flint-knife circumcision and a surgeon explaining, "The ointment is to make it acceptable," likely referring to some form of topical anaseptic.
Ancient Egyptian circumcisions were not done in infancy, but instead marked the transition from boyhood to adulthood. The Greeks saw their Mediterranean neighbors' tradition as rather bizarre. In the fifth century, Herodotus made his opinion known in his work "The History of Herodotus."
"They practice circumcision for the sake of cleanliness," he wrote of the Egyptians, "considering it better to be cleanly than comely."
4. It may have caught on as a status symbol
An increase in hospital births and a perception of circumcision as promoting cleanliness certainly contributed to the rise of the procedure in the United States. But the procedure may have been a status symbol as well.
Writing in the University of Cincinnati Law Review in 2003, Seton Hall University law professor Sarah Waldeck points out that Sayre and his circumcision-promoting colleagues came onto the scene just as hospital births were becoming more common. The wealthy were more likely to go to the hospital and have a physician-attended birth; thus, circumcision became a marker of class. The need to circumcise essentially became a social norm, Waldeck writes. It was what "good" parents chose. As more and more parents made the choice, it became odder and odder not to, which then put more pressure on parents tochoose circumcision so their child would be "normal."
5. Circumcisions leave unique marks
Most circumcisions in the United States are done with one of three devices: the Mogen Clamp, the Plastibell and the Gomco clamp. The Mogen clamp is a scissorlike device consisting of two flat blades used that are clamped over the foreskin, cutting off blood flow. A scalpel is then used to slice away the tip of the foreskin.
The Plastibell is a plastic device that is placed over the head of the penis, under the foreskin. The doctor or nurse then ties a string around the foreskin, cutting off circulation. The string may be used as a guide for the surgical removal of the foreskin, or the Plastibell may be left on for a week or so, after which the dead foreskin will fall off on its own.
The Gomco clamp is also inserted between the head of the penis and the foreskin. Again, the surgeon clamps the device over the foreskin, cutting off circulation. After about five minutes, the blood around the clamp will begin to clot, and the surgeon uses a scalpel to cut away the foreskin. This method sometimes leaves a distinctive light brown scar on the head of the penis