Beauty in Antiquity

It is said that in life everything changes. The thing that does not change is change. The same goes for beauty. It changes in every age, but the concept never changes. We do not know whether in the Stone Age beauty was important, but in written antiquity we have many proofs of the notion of beauty.

In 'Bereshit' we have the story of Jacob, where it is written: 'Leah has tender eyes, but Rachel is beautiful of body and face.' King David fell in love with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, because she was very beautiful. In the 'Song of Songs' we read: 'You are so beautiful that you have no flaw.'

In ancient Greece a woman had to be a little plump and not tanned by the sun, but she was considered a badly made copy of the man. That is, beauty generally spoke of the man, because the man's beauty was the blessing of the gods. The beauty of a man's body kept the beauty of his soul. If a person is beautiful, that person is a good person. I believe the conception of beauty in that period was based on the nature of animals, for whom too beauty lies in the males and not the females: the lion and the lioness, the cock and the hen, the peacock with its enormous tail of a thousand eyes in a thousand colours, like a fan, which the female does not have. Women used vinegar to lighten their hair, which made them lose hair, and so they used false wigs. Long hair was much prized, but only women of the high aristocracy had the right to wear long hair.

In China women had to have very small feet; so they bound their feet from the age of 5-7. They shaved their eyebrows to mark them with a line of a different colour or with a black ink called Chinese ink. Their skin had to be very pale, as is the fashion in that country even today.

In Egypt the beauty of women was to be slender in the whole body. They were not to have any hair, and always wore a wig on the head.

The beauty of a man was to be slim and well formed. Fat men were considered a lower class. Having a beard and moustache was a shame and was considered impure. Having a mirror was a great fashion for men and women.

The make-up that men and women put around their eyes also served as protection against the bacteria formed by so much heat and against the very strong sunlight. As names of women who were examples of beauty in Egypt, we know Cleopatra and Nefertiti. We have no depiction of Cleopatra other than Elizabeth Taylor, who played her part.

But we know very well who Nefertiti was. Of her it is said that she had a very modern look, like a beautiful woman of today, a true art deco (the fashion of the 1920s...). She perfectly fulfils the dogmas of a beautiful woman of our era.

In the Roman Empire we know the Roman woman through the poet Ovid, who lived two thousand years ago. He says the Roman woman should be pale, with rosy cheeks, with black eyes, without perfumes on the body. They were to use make-up only to reinforce their natural beauty. Men had to have short hair, had to shave beard and moustache as in Egypt, and had to go to the Roman baths every day.