Other #80803 Circumcision Among Ancient Peoples

[Ask Zeus Operator]

I keep seeing claims that the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, and others practiced circumcision. Is this true or not? If not, could you please provide some references, because I’m getting confused by all the different sources.

 

[Acolyte Of Pan 666]

I despise circumcision, but what does the study have to do with the OP’s question?

To answer, some roman and greek historians wrote that the Egyptians and other near eastern cultures practiced circumcision and that the hebrews ultimately took the practice from the cultures around them.

There are no real spiritual or mental benefits to the practice.

It’s just a superstitious act that was adopted as a symptom of the dark age we’re currently in, where ignorance is abundant.

It did however die out as a practice that by the point of the roman empire, only hebrews were practicing it. Xians very early on went against the practice.

It would be almost non-existent today it it wasn’t for Islam and weird American protestant sects that made circumcision mainstream in their respective areas.

 

[High Priestess Lydia Coventina]

I despise circumcision, but what does the study have to do with the OP’s question?

Because these are forums, and there is no problem with simply giving additional relevant information.

 

[Stormblood]

The only clear historical grounding for neonatal circumcision is entirely abrahamic.

Never has this practice been associated to Egyptian infants. Otherwise they would show in Egyptian medical texts.

Some authors like Herodotus, Strabus, and Diodorus Siculus do seem to mention circumcision in Egypt but in the context of late teenagers and young adults, which links more to a puberty rite, or other coming-of-age traditions. It also didn't extend to all social classes.

Even so, late Graeco-Roman ethnographic observation (i.e. Herodotus) only reflects a period after Egypt had undergone several, substantial cultural changes including some brought by foreign rule such as the Nubian which 25th Dynasty, Assyrian invasion, Persian occupation.

So, I'd be careful in taking these claims as blanket statements that Egyptians mutilated babies, as that is the Historiyach narrative from Yehuboric enemies, and nothing more.

Like HPS Lydia said: it doesn't make sense to do something like that.

 

[Kuka]

I searched for more info, since i used to work in a scientific library in translationa biomedical research.

- Tinari, P.D. (2009) MRI Studies: The Brain Permanently Altered from Infant Circumcision. Peaceful Parenting.

This is the study, as said By HPS Lydia, i cant' find this on PubMed, which should be indexed.

 

[logicalmind]

If sources for some practice are one-sided and especially talk about negative things, usually you can discredit those sources. Let me give you one example. Teutonic Knights liked to blame Pagan Lithuanians for sacrificing people. But the reality was pretty different. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a Pagan state that was invaded on the basis of a "holy" crusade declared against this country. And Teutonic Knights were the main executors of this crusade. In practice, those knights did the following. Murdered people, burned Lithuanian lands, raped women and children. And Lithuanians, since they were not intoxicated by abrahamic religions, fought back as best as they could. And in some cases, they caught some of the knights. They were not sacrificed on religious basis as Pagans saw them unworthy of such death. This means that no Lithuanian Pagan priest participated in the burning of some criminal knight. Those knights were executed by burning them alive on orders of military leaders, dukes, etc. Like war criminals, rapists as they were. Those knights that were adequate and humane were not killed in such a way and even grand dukes like Kęstutis spared most of them. However, the Teutonic Order always wrote in their sources that Lithuanians were some human sacrificing murderers. Of course they won’t mention in their sources of their own crimes against Lithuanian people.

If you really want objective historical truth, you must look into different sources. Ideally, the origins of those sources must oppose each other ideologically, culturally, politically, etc. Meaning basically the following. If sworn enemies write about something the same thing, then it means this thing should have been true. E.g., if England's and France's sources claim that some pope was a pedophile when those two countries waged their own hundred years war against each other, we can definitely assume that this pope indeed was a pedophile.