0000 Letters from pyramid workers about wigs?
There were letters/petitions found from pyramid builders stating the Egyptian workers would quit work, if they didn't get their supply of make-up and wigs.
would quit work, if they didn't get their supply of make-up and wigs.
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0001a Wigs were all the same style for about 200 years
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0001b Did the same investigators who examined the wigs of Nefertiti's time also examine the wigs centuries before and after her? If they did and there is a difference, they could manifest the difference. What are those differences? (or was such a comparison ever made)?
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0001c Weaving is an art form. There are hundreds of weaves that could have been used. There were no universities or tech schools teaching a standard method. Individuals would create their own technique or learn it from a weaver they worked for. If you look at carpets there was no standard weave. Artist would create their ware and sell it. If it was a better quality the top buyers would be in line. Weavers were artist. There were no standardized machines. In any period of history there may have been dozens of different weaves and they may have used different kinds of materials to create their wigs. (You can not just look at a wig and determine it is the same weave as another)
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0001d What were these wigs Examined by Egyptologist made of?
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0001e Were these Egyptologist actually forensic scientist that dissected the wigs, do chemical test on them and examine each wig under a microscope?
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0001f There are forensic scientist that examine knots and weaving patterns.
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0001g Were the wigs examined by forensic detectives who actually disassembled strands of multiple wigs to determine they were all woven with the same weave?
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0001h If the wig is made of organic material, it could have been carbon 14 dated. Was this done?
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0001i There are those who state the wigs were the same for a 200 period. For them to know that as a fact they would have to know what lab or forensic scientist had tested wigs. If you can establish this did happen, give the name of the forensic scientist or labs that did that testing.
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0001j How many wigs did any forensic lab dismantle to establish what weave was used?
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0001k Only if actual forensic scientist compared a cross section of an array of wigs could they conclude all the wigs of Nefertiti's time period were of the same material, weave and construction. Which scientist made this conclusion, their names and their documentation records?
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0001l Trained Egyptologist are no different than the rest of the public, they state such things as the wigs of this time period was unique... but if it is a fact then the actual scientific studies exist. Where are they?
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0002 -Mostly all Egyptians were bald, hence the wigs.
We know thousands of people around the world wear wigs on top of their hair, so wearing wigs would not mean one was bald.
Cairo Egypt is no further south than northern Florida (where oranges freeze some times). I do not see any people around the world at this distance from the equator who need to shave their heads.
Hair does let some air get through, but a wig is like a hat. It would not make one cool by shaving one's head then putting a wig on .. or being bald and putting a wig and a hat on.
I have seen a whole pot full of mummies and as far as I can remember, all which were unwrapped no baldies, all had hair. There were thousands of mummies. In the 1920s Egyptology became a big fad. People in Britain and the USA had coffins in their houses. If "most Egyptians were bald" and they were buried with their wigs, then there would be thousands of wigs with the mummies, right?
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0003a Did Nefertiti wear that high hat to bed? -Some say she did.
Those who said she did would have no more way to know than I do, we can only ask the question is it logical that she would wear a 14'" top hat to bed?
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0004 -If you wore something tight for years it would leave an impression.
Do you suppose she wore that hat when she was not in the public?
Do we have any way of knowing she wore that hat all the time?
Aren't their many more pictures of Nefertiti with out that hat than with it?
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0005
A wig is nothing like a fingerprint, they can be made for any one
and multiple people can wear the same wig.
Do you really think that Pharaohs wore the same wigs as their subjects?
We are not talking about the wig that belonged to a Pharaoh. The assertion was that wigs are like finger prints.. unique to a certain person.. they are not.
Before one can even hint any pharaoh wore wigs, they would have to produce evidence. All the Pharoahs I remember had their own hair.
Come on, wigs aren't fingerprints, yet they differ in style, materials, pattern and quality.
You hit the nail on the head, there would not have been one artist, one style and thus there could be no assertion that all wigs in that period were typical.
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0006
Such wigs could have been made in any period of 1000 years.
Are you sure? Don't you think the technology of wig making would have
changed over a millennium?
There are knots and weaves that have existed for 5000 years. Of course technology has changed and yet there are some people in Egypt who live like they did 5000 years ago. Travel to the isolated areas and you will see the face of a 5000 year old culture.
A weave is nothing but a series of knots... knots are used as methods to bind things together. Today we use the same knots used for centuries all over the world, and of course every wig maker would have their selection of knots / weaves.
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0007
Wigs are made of certain materials and types of braiding. Unless they
can nail down a certain type of braiding only in the time of Nefertiti,
they have no argument.
What if they did? "Nubian wig, the Nubian hairstyle, which generally was
only worn by royal women between around 1400 and 1300 B.C."
If the royal women or men wore those wigs and they were buried with them, then in all of those tombs where they find mummies all those royals would be buried in their wigs. Is that the case?
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0008
There were millions of Egyptians. Very few records exist about the
life of Molly Jones or any of millions of other Egyptians.
The pyramid builders left a lot of written material about their life...
Give the names of 10 common Egyptians and tell us their names, the names of their relatives and 5 things they each did.
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0009
Wigs = a material any common Egyptian could get ... Wigs = the
ability to weave which was the common knowledge through out Egypt.
Are you sure EVERY Egyptian could buy a wig? Where did you get the
information, that Egyptians made their own wigs?... There are
hieroglyphics where pyramid builders refuse to work if they don't get
their supply of wigs and make-up.
First of all it was not the royals making their own wigs (IF any actually had them).
The material ... hair... dye to make wigs as common as dirt. As far as the ability to weave, do you think only Egyptians who lived near the royals had the ability to weave?
Weaving, rug making, quilt making are hobbies now, but in the past they were skills shared by the vast population in Egypt and around the world.
I have seen my own mom working hour after, week after week, month after month. It would only take the skill of the common population if they wanted wigs.
It was the common Egyptian who made wigs, not the royals and if their babe wanted a wig, they could have made it.
If a king and his woman had 5 wigs a piece.. and they got their wigs from the old wig maker ... and the king lived 10 years, if the wig maker was not making them for others he/she would have had been in the unemployment line for a long time.
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0010
Any queen, any of the girls in the harem, any wealthy Egyptian, any common Egyptian could have multiple wigs.
Were all of these wigs the same? Did the favourite wife wear the same kind of wig as the other wives?
It would be my guess that wigs were made by multiple craftsmen and thus.. no such thing as a typical wig for the period.
As for the wives sharing clothes / wigs it would depend how they got along, no different than girl friends swapping clothes.
Before we could speculate if Nefertiti shared a wig or her clothes, we would first have to prove she had a wig.
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0011
Are all images of Nefertiti with braided hair or are some of the images of Nefertiti with straight hair?
There are images of her with the royal wig and with the royal hatcrown.
How do you know it is a wig and not her own hair? If it is the latest rage a whole bunch of women will jump on the band wagon. I have seen "white girls" have their hair braided in the styles a lot of black girls use.. and back in the 70's I saw a whole bunch of "white boys" with Afro's. Would Nefertiti have been out of style?
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0012
Wigs from 1400 to 1300 BC? I thought they had wigs back as far as 2000 BC. If you find information of wigs before and after 1400 -1300 BC please add it.
Are you implying that all of these wigs were the same and came from one place only?
No I would speculate that wigs came from multiple craftsmen.
I am saying before you could say that wigs were different from one period of history than another (a) you would have to establish their was a constant in one period that was different than all other periods.
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0013
What reason would robbers have to take a wig from her head and if robbers took it then following statements would be false.
That had to be a royal wig, i.e. had gold in it. If someone (priests of Amun) wanted to erase Nefertiti from the pages of history (witch was common practise), they could have mutilated her mummy and robbed her tomb.
It was common practice for a priest to erase royals from history? Today we have vandals who destroy public figures. Not to erase their history but just because they are hateful vandals.
What proof is there of who vandalized any monuments or why?
If the wig found by the Frenchman (said to be that of the mummy in the tomb), if that wig had gold in it, wouldn't they noted and mentioned that? Remember they did not take the wig in the first place.
Before one could even guess that a tomb of Nefertiti was robbed, wouldn't they first have evidence she was ever buried there?
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0014
The assertion: Nefertiti was shaved bald because she had a lice/disease problem ?
To make the case a mummy found was that of Nefertiti, they had a problem. The mummy was bald, so they declare Nefertiti was shaven bald.
In all the images of her with out her top hat, she was shown with hair, so this had to be a wig (NO facts to back it up)
They pick one particular bust.. the most famous. Here the artist could remove any flaws from what he actually saw, kind of like using an air brush.
In the famous bust of Nefertiti the hair is not visible so that means she was shaven bald?
Here is an array of people with wigs or hats. You can not see their own hair, so that means they all had a cootie problem and they were all shaven bald?
Not being able to see hair when a wig or hat coming below one's ears, might not mean they had a cootie problem and were shaved. It might indicate their hair was tucked up under the hat/wig.
The reason why this Egyptologist asserts Nefertiti was bald, is based on NO evidence, no Egyptian text. The reason why this Egyptologist asserts Nefertiti was bald is because the mummy she wants to belong to Nefertiti was bald ... HMMMMM ?
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0015 Joann has traced down the story behind the wig. In 1898, a Frenchman named Victor Loret began excavating a tomb. Loret found a wig.
If wig in the museum is the one Victor Loret found from this particular collection of women, you could only know that from his diaries or a book he wrote (1898). Please cite the exact entry where Loret recorded how and where he found this particular wig.
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0016 Dying hair
The only way one could consider any Egyptian might have had other than black hair is to have it chemically tested.
*
Egyptologist Friedman discovered a female burial near Nekhen. Very early attempts were made to mummify her and her hair remained somewhat intact. When examined it showed signs of being dyed with Henna, and of the use of hair extensions.
*
The idea that thousands of Egyptians were bald and wore wigs they were buried with: There are thousands up on thousands of mummies that survived, now look at the % of wigs to mummies found... look at the % of shaven head mummies that exist.
A shaved head with a wig would not make it cooler, but hotter. When I was a kid I had a couple of those buzz cuts.. the idea of covering your head with a wig or hat, after you cut off your hair to be cool.. does not work.
Cairo is about the same location as Northern Florida. No where in this region around the world has any population ever shaved their heads.
Hair lasts years after a body is decayed, so where are all the mummies with wigs and (if shaved) why do we find the vast numbers of mummies with their own hair?
Yes the natives of that area of the world did dye their hair. There are chemical traces and one of the most used ways to dye their hair was with cow urine (still used today).
In a documentary of natives of Africa they showed a bunch of red hair natives of Sudan ( once called Nubia ) and revealed they got their red hair from cow urine.
I captured a frame of the video of a Sudan kid putting his head under a cow while she tinkled.
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0017 Are all images of Nefertiti with braided hair or are some of the images of Nefertiti with straight hair?
What % of images of Nefertiti are wearing a hat and what % with out a hat?
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0018
Narrator: The long neck is a clue. So is the band mark around the head. Beneath her high crown, Nefertiti's head was shaved, a precaution against lice, disease, and the Egyptian heat.
It would be no cooler to shave your head and then put on a wig !
What evidence is there that Nefertiti had a lice problem?
The unidentified mummy was shaved, what is your evidence that Nefertiti was shaved?
What % of the mummies of known queens were shaved and found with wigs?
What % of the mummies of known queens had their own hair and not buried with wigs?
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0019
The mark around the mummies head is a clue that something rather tight-fitting would have been worn.
Skin is very elastic. If you watch forensic science you will note marks left on a body are different if they were made before or after death.
On one forensic science detective documentary an impression was left on a woman's thigh. It only remained there because she was killed, the blood stopped flowing.
If an impression was left on that woman's head, it would remain there only because she was killed or died while she was wearing it. It is not likely that a sick woman laying on a bed would continue to sport her high hat.
There are hundreds if not thousands of images of Nefertiti, do you suppose she sat and posed for them all or did different artist create their image from one they already saw?
Was that hat some kind of royal hat or is it a fashion that Nefertiti liked. How many other queens of Egypt are painted with that style hat?
We don't know how many times Nefertiti wore that hat, only that the famous statue is with that hat on... and we can guess she did not pose for the endless images, but they were copied from a famous image.
Some of you guys who wear ball hats all the time, when you wake up in the morning go to the mirror and see if there is any mark on your head. Wearing something tight would not leave an impression in the skin.
Talk about tight... good thing most of you girls weren't around in the girdle decade, those elastic bands left deep impressions, but a bit after they were taken off they vanished.
We don't know how often Nefertiti wore that hat, but in all the images of her there are many more wearing no hat,
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0020
In a detective documentary program, they found a blond scalp and were trying to figure out who it belonged to. It took them a while but then they realized it was the scalp of a black hair woman who had been missing. Time and the elements bleached the hair very light. Moisture nor light turns a light hair/blond hair black.
The number of wigs compared to the number of mummies found are trivial, but in all the wigs found, I can't remember ever seeing a blond / red wig. It seems that all existing wigs were black hair.
If blond/red hair people existed, why wouldn't they create blond/red wigs?
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0021
There are a whole bunch of paintings of Frenchmen in their fluffy shirts wearing those white wigs (as well as women and children).
While dressed up for social events they wore wigs.. but usually it was the upper crust. The common people had the material and ability to create their wigs, but would no more wear them than I would wear a tux like the boys at the golf club.
When posing for Olan Mills, or at the sock hop, we see Washington sporting a rug, but in the paintings of him there are those with out a wig.
The only function of wigs is a fashion statement (maybe if some one had cancer), but no one shaves their head and puts on a wig.
The British judges / lawyers wore wigs because it was a social concept and when they were not in a public place doing that job, they did not wear them. Putting a wig on for a portrait is like putting a suite on for a high school picture. Wigs were for show and tell, nothing else.
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0022
To me and millions of men through out time a woman's hair was part of her beauty. I can not imagine a king who could have any women he wanted, going to the sack with a bald woman?
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0023
Before one could even speculate on the % of Egyptians who were shaved and were wigs, you would have to take the number of mummies you could x-ray and see
#1 What % of them had their own hair and what % of mummies were buried... bald with wigs.
Egyptians wore wigs like Americans wear ball hats. Some do, some do not and before you could estimate what % some was, you would have to count
#2 The ratio of mummies with to mummies with out wigs.
To estimate the number of bald Egyptians you would have to do the same thing,
#3 Ratio of mummies with their own hair to mummies shaven bald.
#4 In the number of pharaohs/queens identified what % did not have their own hair?
When the experts give us their data on these studies we can guess what % of Egyptians were bald or wore wigs. If any anthropologist have actual statical studies, please identify the group and where their documentation is recorded.
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0024
The purpose for a whole bunch of people wearing wigs?
* They were hot so they shaved their heads and put wigs on ... and wearing a thick wig would make one cooler than having their own natural hair?
I never wore a wig but I have heard girls talking about how wigs made their head sweat... and here are just a couple of Googles
Tips For Wigs
On very hot days, you might decide to go without a wig and opt for turbans or hats. These, too, can cause your head to sweat. |
Headline It - WIG LINER and SWEAT ELIMINATOR for athletes, cancer ...
"But I know first hand how uncomfortable and hot wigs can be." Wigs trap sweat and oil and can be scratchy, particularly. I used to have to wear a hard hat in northern American... they have ventilation and they made me sweat. Wearing one of those thick nit wigs would have been worse than wearing a sock hat in the summer. |
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You can not see the natural hair of people with hats that come past your ears, nor with wigs that come down past your ears. Because you can not see one's hair, does not mean you are bald... or all those Frenchmen were bald?
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Is there any facts to prove the images of Nefertiti with hair, was a wig and not her own hair or is this assertion based on nothing more than the motivation to match a bald mummy with Nefertiti?
How hot would tight knitted wigs be on a bald head in the middle of Egypt on a hot summer day ? It would be my guess all those royals were made nice and comfy. Pick any 1000 mummies and show me 50 wigs buried with them.
Re: wigs
There were probably many reasons why some of the AE wore wigs, on occasion.
Most that we now see are temple and tomb images, which would have had religious implications.
There is also the fact that the modern Egyptians wear long robes and head gear [if they prefer]. This is because, as crazy as it sounds to us 'westerners'....it is cooler.
As many burials have proven, not all AE were 'bald' or had shaven heads, although it was a requirement of some of the priestly cults.
The mummies in some burials found have full heads of hair, [or what remained after the mummification process and time]....
There are also tomb wall art showing some type of 'official party' in which the honored guests are shown wearing the wigs with the traditional 'cup' of Nard,(lard mixed with different scents), and which slowly melted into the wigs giving off the perfumes.
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0027
re: wigs
I did say that not all Egyptians chose to shave their heads and that some mummies were found in burial with long hair intact. I'm a little puzzled about your post because, I am unsure if you were trying to refute what I had to say or not. But the general wisdom is that wigs were worn because of the pervasiveness of lice.
If I can find a reliable source with a paragraph about it, I'll post it, but I have so many books on Egypt that may not be possible. Fashion played a huge part in the success of wigs also. As time went on, the wigs became more and more elaborate.
And, yes, that is quite true about the wax cones that they wore on their wigs that slowly emitted scents. It was just another way of warding off what must have been the smell of living in such a hot region. These cones became just as fashionable as wigs themselves. I'm not trying to argue with anyone. I am just imparting what I have learned over many years of study. Lynn
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0028
The subject of wigs and mummies comes up frequently and I think there's a misconception that the wigs.
Egyptians wore in life were plopped on the heads of their mummies. The vast majority of people were mummified and buried in their own gods given locks. The hair added to their craniums after death were not what they would have worn in life.
Full wigs on mummies are rare. Most of those found are just what might be termed, "falls" or "wigglets". These were added to fill out what hair may have been lost during a last illness and were added to make the body "whole". These might be attached with string, beeswax or even glue.
Hair may outlast a body, but it doesn't necessarily outlive someone with a terminal illness or old age. The wigs worn in life were usually buried in their containers. Several of these exist. All have come from unruffled or reasonably intact tombs.
Offhand I can only think of those from the tombs of Kha and Merit, Yuaa and Thuiu and a few found discarded by thieves as worthless. The wigs I've seen that were worn by living Egyptians are a mixed lot. All look pretty nasty.
They were coated with beeswax which made them keep their style, but over the centuries they've become caked with dirt. Most of the books describe these as being "black". However when cleaned, they're usually a dark brown when made from human hair - top of the line model. I don't know of any that were made of wool - another frequent attribute.
There is a wig in the MMA that is from the Roman period that is made from wood shavings. This may have been more of a hat than a wig, but "a wig" is what the tag on the case says.
100 years ago women kept "hair receivers" on their dressing tables. My grandmother still had one.
Whenever a woman would comb her hair she would take what came loose from the comb and put it into her hair receiver. This loose hair could be added to puff up her "Gibson Girl" hairstyle to the right mass. I'm wondering if the Ancient Egyptians did the same thing and we just have not recognized what they were.
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0029
What we have learned usually means what we have heard, from others who told (taught) us what we have heard.
Not trying to argue... argue = to prove
To argue is to reason, to present all facts ... good stuff
To hold something to be true because you heard it from another who heard it ... hmmmm
"But the general wisdom
is that wigs were worn because of the pervasiveness of lice"
Wisdom is not the ability to memorize but the ability to reason.
We can never know about ancient history, we can only form a belief.
The first task would be to ask the question is this "general wisdom" based on facts or is it based on hearsay repeated over and over, with no facts?
The ONLY way we could have any facts that the ancient Egyptians had a lice problem would be by :
a) What they wrote in hieroglyphics and
b) ???? how else would we know about ancient Egyptians having a lice problem?
If my mother wrote her sister and told her about the kids down the street that had lice.. 500 years later the letter was found, should future man believe Americans had a lice problem?
Now unless there is a way other than by what the Egyptians wrote in hieroglyphics to believe they had a mass population problem with lice, does the "general wisdom" consist of evidence or hearsay?
Argue / reason great... just don't say my mama wears combat boots. As long as we are not in junior high cat fights, we are cool.
If you find "general wisdom" in the form of evidence that Egyptians had a mass population lice problem. We will be sure to include that information.
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0030
A quick comment about why there are no bald Egyptians today. Now we have numerous medicated shampoos that will wipe out lice in a few minutes.
Over the centuries, many populations dealt with lice in many ways, some using certain herbs that discouraged the critters, others using fine-tooth combs.
It does remain a problem today, but we have the medications at our disposal that the Egyptians did not have. * There are people living in Egypt today who do not even have aspirins.
Far from the cities they live like they did 3000 years ago. And in Africa where thousands are starving they have no medicine, Many have very short hair. We see little kids with flies all over their face.. very short hair but NO shaved heads and NOT one wig
Wigs would protect on one from insects nor heat. Fleas live on flesh.. after our pup complains we put the stuff on her and the fleas stay off for a while, but they still live in the house, the carpet is very comfy. Lice would be NO excuse to shave one's head and put a coon skin hat over your bald spot
0031
Climate of Egypt comparison
Of course it gets very hot and cold in the desert, in the middle east or right here in the USA, but no one ever lived in the desert. The climate of Egypt where people live has the same average as that in other areas of the earth which are the same distance from the equator.
Cairo Egypt is about the same distance from the equator as Jacksonville Florida. When the Europeans came to the Americas their drawings of the native Americans from northern Florida, to the equator showed no bald headed people.
I have been as far as Largo Florida and saw mass populations which wore nothing on their head to protect them from the sun (including me).
If you want to know how people reacted to climate you need only see how far they were from the equator, then walk around the earth at that parallel.
Cairo is about the same distance from the equator as Huston Texas, areas in Pakistan and Shanghai. When we look at the cultures through out history, we see the people at that distance from the equator did not shave their heads, then put on wigs to protect themselves from the sun.
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0032
Where in the world do lice hang their hat
Both the peasants and the lice were reservoirs for typhus, which had long been an endemic disease of Russia and Poland. 584, 1900 La Plata, Argentina. Density and age structure of lice collected .... The climate is temperate humidmesothermal, with an undefined rainy season ... Argentina: three young/healthy women. infants with neural. tube defects after 1. st. trimester tanning ... Evidence from lice. However, genetic evidence Cretaceous of Patagonia, Argentina. Pages 545-559. Publisher. Journal ..... Thriving in an arid environment: High prevalence of avian lice in low humidity Lice thrive from Russia/Canada to Argentina. They live through summer and winter. Lice thrive in the wilderness on animals and in human populations. Start here with Google http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=lice+infestation lice infestation (then to the right type in the names of nations around the world) You might read letters of Europeans and see they had their own lice infestations. In the period of history of Egyptology, Europeans had no medicine, they were pagans who did things like bleeding to make people well or cast spells on them. There is NO reason why Egyptians would have a greater lice problem than any one on earth. There is NO evidence that Egyptian populations did have a lice problem. We do have records of multiple European health problems and plagues. We could speculate that All Frenchmen had lice All Frenchmen shaved themselves bald All Frenchmen then wore wigs to protect them from the elements because There are records of Some Frenchmen wearing wigs. One does not need to go to Egypt to find lice, they thrive in Canada outside in horse barns through out the winter. Egyptians would no more need to shave their heads because of lice then cover them up to protect them from the elements than the native Americans of Florida to the Aztecs. Wigs .. a fashion statement worn by an unknown fraction of Egyptians on special occasions. Like glasses and false teeth out they come when it is time for nighty night. Like people all over the world who wear wigs, they are only worn in public places to be seen and they are put on the hat rack when Homer Simpson comes on. |
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0033
Nubian hair style? .. Cushites
There is a statue of young woman in the Ptolemaic periods exhibiting a typical Nubian hairstyle consisting of five small clumps of hair.
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0034
On the lighter side of the news
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0035
There is NO text that states Nefertiti shaved her head
0036
0037
Wigs were a prelude to love making
0038
Mummies of less wealthy poorer show evidence of extensions and weaves, to simulate the wigs worn the upper classes.
How can they tell which of the mummies was poor or wealthy in life?
In the mass grave yards of the common people on the East side of the Nile.. Thebes, what % of that multitude were mummies and what % were just planted in the ground?
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