Chapter 3

**2. Shave all your body hair!**

Hmm, thinking about it carefully, for modern people, running naked doesn't seem to be something absolutely unacceptable. After all, we are no longer living in a feudal era that values chastity and virtue. In modern France, outside the port of Provence, there is even an island with a permanent population of 200 nudists. And it seems that the people of Taiwan are also actively learning from Europe and America, frequently holding illegal nudist camps in the outskirts of Taipei...

Alright, now, after some effort, you, the main characters who have traveled through time, have basically overcome the shame of being naked in public and have discarded your clothes and sense of propriety in the ancient Egyptian world. Is everything basically fine now?

Meow hahaha, I'm sorry, but it's not that easy to pass. There is still a more shameful task waiting for you—shaving your body hair!

Due to the hot climate, the Egyptians paid special attention to cleanliness and had the habit of shaving all their hair and body hair to prevent lice and other parasites from breeding and causing various terrible diseases—medical standards in that era were also a tragedy.

As a result, men and women in Egypt naturally became almost all bald, and wigs became the norm. Over time, being bald and wearing wigs became a custom among the ancient Egyptians. The poor, who couldn't afford wigs, would wrap their heads in headscarves instead.

Conversely, if someone had a lot of body hair that wasn't shaved clean, they would be ridiculed and mocked by others, who would say they were dirty and not like Egyptians.

Readers who have read manga might know that in "The Sky is Red River," the character Ramses and his sister, because of their foreign blood and dislike of shaving their heads and wearing wigs, were seen as outsiders by other Egyptian nobles and were very much excluded in the noble circles.

(Note: The ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for a long time, and customs varied by era, so there were occasionally times when shaving the head was not as popular. Similarly, the Chinese originally always kept their hair in a topknot, but during the Qing Dynasty, they shaved their heads and kept long braids.)

Worse still, the ancient Egyptians not only believed that hair should be shaved but also that armpit hair and pubic hair should not be spared. The priests even had to shave their eyebrows.

In modern society, only men need to buy razors to shave their beards, but in ancient Egypt, both men and women needed razors: men shaved their beards and pubic hair, while women used razors to clean their pubic area—note that since the teenagers in ancient Egypt were naked, whether or not pubic hair was shaved was no longer a personal privacy issue but something everyone could see, just like facial hair.

Thus, even if the time travelers wanted to take shortcuts and only shave their heads but not their pubic hair, it wouldn't work. If they went out without shaving their pubic hair, they would be ridiculed or considered barbarians from foreign lands—ancient Egyptians were very xenophobic!

Since bronze razors were expensive and common families couldn't afford them, they had to seek help from barbers. Ancient Egyptian barbers not only shaved heads but also armpit hair and pubic hair, for both men and women—don't mistake them for evil torturers!

I wonder what the male protagonists who want to seduce Egyptian girls would think about these bald beauties? It might feel like sleeping with a nun?

So, what would happen if the time travelers insisted on not shaving their body hair in ancient Egypt?

It wouldn't be good. They would be seen as outsiders by the whole society, making it difficult to move around. Moreover, there was no shampoo or soap at that time, and even the method of burning mugwort to drive away mosquitoes might not have been invented—rich people would burn incense to drive away mosquitoes, but the poor couldn't afford it.

Thus, in the hot and humid nights of ancient Egypt, after you fell asleep, the wet sweat and hair would attract many lice and other small insects, biting you until your skin was red and swollen, your head full of bumps, and you might even contract some incurable parasitic diseases...

So, please, time travelers, respect local traditions and obediently accept the... uh, shaving!

However, even if you overcome your shame, shaving body hair in ancient Egyptian society was a very painful process—there were no laser hair removal or electric razors, not even sharp steel knives. As depicted in "The Sky is Red River," iron weapons were still the secret and powerful tools of the Hittites, and their price was higher than gold of the same weight, so no one would use them for razors.

By the time iron smelting technology spread and the price of steel dropped significantly, the ancient Egyptian civilization was almost on the verge of collapse.

—Even the early Roman legions used bronze short swords, let alone the ancient Egyptians who came before them.

So, the ancient Egyptians could only use dull bronze razors to remove hair (scissors didn't exist at the time; the earliest scissors were invented by the Chinese during the Western Han Dynasty), and even these bronze razors only appeared during the Middle Kingdom period of Egypt. Before that, they had even more tragic flint blades... Since these primitive tools couldn't shave cleanly, barbers usually had to use tweezers to pluck the remaining hair.

This led to a problem: in ancient times, without antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs, many people in the East and West died from infections caused by cuts from shaving. The skin in our pubic area is much more delicate and sensitive than our face, making it even easier to be cut by a razor—so perhaps the lack of effective razors in ancient Egypt was a good thing?

Hmm, in short, if you don't have confidence in your own skills, it's best to find a skilled barber to shave your body hair for you!

But no matter how skilled the ancient Egyptian barbers were, the primitive tools made it impossible to avoid pain.

In short, when you go to a barber in ancient Egypt to shave your body hair, if you have the means, you can first apply some primitive soap to your pubic area—usually just a small ball of animal fat mixed with wood ash, but the poor couldn't afford it—otherwise, just wash with water. Then the barber will hold a knife in one hand and your hair in the other, slowly "sawing" back and forth...

But because the bronze or flint blades were too dull, even if you were in excruciating pain, they couldn't shave cleanly. After several passes, the barber would take out a large pair of tweezers (similar to the ones used to pick up sugar cubes today), hold them up to the sun, and pluck out the remaining hair one by one...

Hmm? How painful is this? Try plucking a few hairs from your pubic area yourself, and you'll definitely be gritting your teeth in agony.

Worse still, if the barber is a beginner or not in good form, your pubic area might be cut and bloodied, as if you had just come out of a eunuch's "cleansing room" or "silk room."

Because shaving in the pre-iron age was so painful, the Mayans, who were still in the Stone Age, would often apply hot towels to their children's faces from a young age to prevent them from growing beards. But this method couldn't be used on the genital area, as it could easily lead to sterility.

Dear time travelers, especially the female travelers, given how terrible the shaving service in ancient Egypt was, it would be best to get a full-body laser hair removal at a beauty clinic before traveling to the banks of the Nile!

(By the way, I've always been curious about how Carol and Yuki shaved their body hair in ancient Egypt? Could they be naturally hairless?)

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