Circumcision likely has ancient roots among several ethnic groups in sub-equatorial Africa, Egypt, and Arabia, though the specific form and extent of circumcision has varied. Ritual male circumcision is known to have been practiced by South Sea Islanders, Aboriginal peoples of Australia, Sumatrans, and some Ancient Egyptians.
Today it is still practiced by Jews, Samaritans, Druze, Coptic Christians, Ethiopian Orthodox, Eritrean Orthodox, Muslims, and some tribes in East and Southern Africa; as well as in the United States, South Korea, as well as the Philippines.
As practiced in ancient Egypt and elsewhere in Africa, only part of the foreskin was removed. However,in Judaism and in the United States, the foreskin is completely removed.
Circumcision and/or subincision, often as part of an intricate coming of age ritual, was a common practice among the Aboriginal peoples of Australia and most Pacific islanders at first contact with Western travellers. It is still practiced in the traditional way by some of the population.
Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE, lists first of all the Egyptians being the oldest people practicing circumcision then Colchians, Ethiopians, Phoenicians, and Syrians as circumcising cultures.
Purpose.
The purpose of circumcision has been variously proposed that it began:
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.
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." Freud believed that circumcision allows senior men to constrain the incestuous desires of their juniors, and mediates the tension inherent in the father-son relationship and generational succession. Youth are symbolically castrated, or feminized, but also blessed with masculine fruitfulness.
Circumcision may have been practiced among Homo sapiens prior to the Out of Africa migration. As late as 45,000 BCE, modern humans migrated into Australia. Based on iconographic evidence of Australian Aboriginal peoples from the Paleolithic era, circumcision may have been practiced as early as the Paleolithic by these groups.
Ancient world.
Ancient Africa.
North Africa.
At Oued Djerat, in Algeria, engraved rock art with masked bowmen, which feature male circumcision and may be a scene involving ritual, have been dated to earlier than 6000 BP amid the Bubaline Period; more specifically, while possibly dating much earlier than 10,000 BP, rock art walls from the Bubaline Period have been dated between 9200 BP and 5500 BP. The cultural practice of circumcision may have spread from the Central Sahara, toward the south in Sub-Saharan Africa and toward the east in the region of the Nile.
West Africa.
The Nomoli figurines, which were created by the Mende people in Sierra Leone and depict male circumcised genitalia, have been dated between the 7th century CE and the 8th century CE.
Central and East Africa.
Prior to 300 CE, male circumcision, which is a cultural practice that is part of male initiations, is estimated to have existed in Africa for more than 9000 years. By 300 CE, male initiation and male circumcision had ceased among matrilineal Bantu-speaking peoples in East Africa and Central Africa.
Agatharchides of Cnidus (2nd century BCE) indicated that "troglodyte" ethnic groups practiced circumcision; these groups may have resided along the African coast of the Red Sea in southern Egypt or near the Gulf of Zula in present-day Eritrea; while most of these groups practiced a form of circumcision that involved partial excision, the ethnic group, identified by Agatharchides as the "Colobi" ("the mutilated"), were indicated to have practiced a form of circumcision that involved total excision.
Herodotus (5th century BCE) indicated that ancient Ethiopians practiced circumcision.
Southern Africa.
In the 19th century CE, Shaka, a Zulu king, prohibited male circumcision due to concerns that young circumcised men might be less interested in joining as warriors in the military force he was amassing and uniting in the region of southern Africa and might be more interested in seeking opportunities for having sex.
Egypt.
According to studies, the Egyptian rite performed at the age of puberty, did not involve the amputation of an annular piece of the foreskin as in the modern Jewish rite of brit milah. Instead, it would have involved excising a triangular section, or alternately just creating a longitudinal incision, in the dorsal face of the foreskin. In modern terms, this is preputioplasty and/or dorsal slit (superincision). This is supported by artworks and statues showing foreskins, some of which present an incision on the glans, not an annular circumcision.
There is also limited evidence of some individuals with circumcision. The rite may then have changed to circumcision by the time of Herodotus' visit to Egypt.
The rite was 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. On the other hand, medical historian Frederick Hodges argues there is evidence against the purported prevalence of circumcision in Egypt, proposing it was limited to priests, functionaries and some workers.
Based on engraved evidence found on walls and evidence from mummies, the rite has been dated to at least as early as 6000 BCE in ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptian mummies, which have been dated as early as 4000 BCE, show evidence of having undergone the rite.
At the mastaba of Ankhmahor in Saqqara, an engraved wall provides an account of Uha, dated to the 23rd century BCE, which indicates that he and others underwent the rite.
Sixth Dynasty (2345–2181 BCE) tomb artwork in Egypt has been thought to be the oldest documentary evidence of the rite, the most ancient depiction being a bas-relief from the necropolis at Saqqara (c. 2400 BCE). In the oldest written account, by an Egyptian named Uha, in the 23rd century BCE, he describes a mass rite 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."
The Egyptian hieroglyph for "penis" (𓂸 D52) depicts either an erect organ, which may or may not be circumcised in representation.
Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE, wrote that the Egyptians did not find the outcome to be aesthetically pleasing but that they "practise circumcision for the sake of cleanliness, considering it better to be cleanly than comely."
David Gollaher claimed the rite in ancient Egypt to be a mark of passage from childhood to adulthood. He mentions that the alteration of the body and ritual 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.
Strabo and Philo of Alexandria indicated that the ancient Egyptians practiced circumcision. Clement of Alexandria relates that Pythagoras was circumcised by Egyptian priests, as was Thales of Miletus. In the Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers a scene is depicted with one brother appearing to circumcise himself.
Diodorus Siculus and Xanthus of Lydia indicated that female circumcision was also a common custom in ancient Egypt. A papyrus, which was part of the Serapeum's Ptolemaios archive at Memphis and has been dated to 163 BCE, indicated that an ancient Egyptian girl, Tathemis, was scheduled to undergo it.
Semitic peoples.
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 Canaan', and "the Syrians who dwell about the rivers Thermodon and Parthenius, as well as their neighbours the Macronians and Macrones". Sanchuniathon, a purportedly ancient Phoenician writer recorded by Philo of Byblos, tells the origin of circumcision as part of a myth, according to which the god Kronos circumcised himself and his allies to atone for his castration of his father Ouranos. Herodotus 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."
Archaeological or further literary records do not support that circumcision was truly widespread among Semites. In the case of the Phoenicians, it has been proposed that Herodotus and successors like Aristophanes might have mistaken Jews for them, as Biblical sources describe Phoenicians and other peoples like the Philistines as uncircumcised. Roman authors do not mention circumcision in Carthage or other Phoenician settlements in Africa, even although it would have added to the colourful Punic stereotype entertained in Roman literature. Other authors believe Phoenicians abandoned the practice at some point, although it might have not fully died out, as proved by Philo's record.
Josephus seems to suggest that the Edomites were uncircumcised until being forcefully converted to Judaism by John Hyrcanus. It has been also interpreted, however, that up to that point they actually practiced a different kind of genital cutting such as preputioplasty or superincision (dorsal slit) that was later replaced by circumcision.
Judaic culture.
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. 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, "kārat berît" meaning to seal a covenant translates literally as "cut a covenant". It is presumed by Jewish scholars that the removal of the foreskin symbolically represents such a sealing of the covenant. Moses might not have been circumcised; one of his sons was not, nor were some of his followers while traveling through the desert. Moses's wife Zipporah circumcised their son when God threatened to kill Moses.
Hellenistic world.
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. Negative evaluations of the aesthetic outcome of the procedure may have 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, Samaritans, 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 (from "my youth") 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.
Cultural pressures to circumcise operated throughout the Hellenistic world: when the Judean king John Hyrcanus conquered the Idumeans, 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 gymnasiums and 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 writer Aulus Cornelius Celsus described two surgical techniques for foreskin restoration in his medical treatise "De Medicina". 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 the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision defined in the Bible was a relatively minor circumcision; named