In relation to personal hygiene, soap is first mentioned in an cuneiform Sumerian text written 4,600 to 4,800 years ago. It was found on a clay tablet at Girsu (now southern Iraq):

“That he (Kindazi) might clean with water, scrub with soap.”

Kindazi was a minor deity and personal groomer to higher gods. “Scrub with soap” suggests this is a proto-soap – a cleaning paste of fat/oil and an alkali, not the solid commodity form of mass produced soap we’re familiar with.

In Sumer proto-soap was used as medicine and for personal hygiene. But its main use, along with other alkalis such as Fuller’s Earth, was to clean sheep’s wool. In Girsu, this settlement of ~40,000 plucked and washed ~142 tonnes of wool over a 3 month season into 6 grades. Such was the scale and skill of agricultural revolution industry.

Urbanisation and structured hygiene are present in Sumer, but there’s no evidence that they engaged in the hyper-hygiene practices of Egyptian contemporaries. ‘Beliefs’ around ‘purity’ drove levels of hygiene behaviours – and it resembles today - ‘science’ is marketed around a changing fashion of ‘success’ for the 75% of humanity with accesses to basic hygiene.

Figure 01: Cuneiform inscribed Sumerian clay tablet. British Museum (left). Reconstruction of bridge and canal with water-propelling “Venturi effect” flume at Girsu (centre). British Museum. Michel Eugène Chevreul, Chemist, aged 100 (1886). Photo: Eugene Pirou. The Wellcome Collection.

Pragmatic vs Hyper-Hygiene

Sumerians and Egyptians equated purity with religious practice, but in Girsu it was a temple related concern. Personal hygiene wasn’t a religious or ritual duty to maintain order (ma’at) as in Egypt as they didn’t fear the chaos of one life source, the Nile, failing to flood annually.

In ancient Sumer purity (hygiene) wasn’t a universal obligation in life and for afterlife access. They seem spared the dermatological aspects of hyper-hygiene discussed in Part 4. Girsu’s cuneiform tablets refer to scabies, boils and sores that can be linked to insanitary conditions of urbanisation and skin microbiome dysbiosis. However, there’s no mention of acne - despite the presence of proto-soap.

Soap Saponified

The Egyptians ‘invented’ hyper-hygiene. We can’t say that the Sumerians ‘invented’ soap, as both had proto-soaps. Long after Sumer, a Roman, Pliny the Elder, mentions proto- and solid soap used for hair care and washing by Gauls and Germans. Proto-soap has the cleansing, pH, anti-microbial (medicinal) properties of a solid soap. Little has changed in ~5,000 years.

So there’s the question of when this commodity appears in the loss of diversity story skin microbiome. Soap is a potent anti-microbial product not simply an agent to remove dirt from the skin. That’s why ancient cultures used it as a wound healing medicine.

Soap is a salt of a fatty acid made by a chemical process called saponification. Typically it’s the reaction between a fat or oil and an alkaline substance like a sodium or a potassium. The term ‘saponification’ was coined In 1823 by Michel Eugène Chevreul. Saponification gives us soap and glycerine (glycerol). Chevreul didn’t invent soap - he characterised it.

Figure 02: Thomas J. Barratt circa 1900, Hulton-Deutsch Collection. (left). Brand stamped 10 Centime ‘ambush’ advertising of 1882 resulting in the Counterfeit Medal Act 1883 to stop Barratt’s ‘awareness’ campaign (centre left). Lilly Langtre (actress) the first celebrity endorsement 1882 (centre right). Bar of Pears ‘translucent’ soap (right).

The Invention of Marketing

Andrew Pears made the first translucent soap in 1830 by recombining soap and glycerol. The pioneer of mass-market commoditised hygiene (soap, skincare) was his son-in-law Thomas J. Barratt. As this world-first brand manager noted, “any fool can make soap”- marketing was a more important factor. This was a significant moment in the history of skin and human health, and Barratt changed the industry to what it is today, brand marketing-led.

An appalling chronicle of human misery, suffering, disease and death arose from the second British industrial revolution (the commodity stage) due to mass urbanisation. Jericho, at least 10,325 (±75) ago, had artificial plaster floors and walls in their mud brick based huts - Britain’s urbanised poor didn’t, as Chadwick reported then Engels politicised:

“…West Riding of Yorkshire, the weavers live in huts with mud walls, the rooms are without wooden flooring, and often the street is a narrow, filthy, stagnant ditch."

In the century from 1750, Britain's population increased from 6 to 18 million. In 1801 20% of workers were employed in manufacturing supply chains, by 1871 it was 67%.

So, to the emerging middle-class Victorian the presence of poverty, destitution, starvation, disease and death at the core of their newly acquired wealth - the new urbanised society – made them fearful - multi-directionally. Barratt, and his rapid copyists, had a highly captive audience who sought success through hygiene.

Hygiene became an exercise in exaggerating partial solutions to actual and psychological human fears. Nothing in hygiene marketing has changed since - nor indeed product. It’s all soap. The preservative base of all ‘skincare’ products makes them all disinfectants with a marketing story. It’s essentially all the same product. As Barrett quipped

“Any fool can make soap, but it takes a clever man to sell it."

Of note, Barratt’s marketing copy didn’t recommend hyper-hygiene - unlike the diktats of the high-status ancient Egyptians or the irresponsible marketing campaigns of today.

Naked Apes

There’s a strong psychological thread in the journey of human behaviours from proto-urban civilisation to today. It’s simply that humans wish to deny that they’re mammals

”Hygiene” is a necessary act for any animal - a natural-hygiene. For us, the ‘naked ape’ we think that hygiene somehow ‘sets us apart’ as it masks our animality. This has been much exploited by the ‘clever minds’ of soap and skincare hygiene marketing.

Discussing how cleanliness tends to be mistaken for morality and cultural superiority by society, Freud ironically remarked in 1930:

“Indeed, we should not be surprised to see soap used as a yardstick of civilisation.’

Survival-hygiene, structured-hygiene and hyper-hygiene, its soap and skincare - all unnatural acts - might sum 'humanity'. Little has changed in thousands of years - nothing is ever 'new', but that's the last thing a Barratt-founded commodity-marketing industry would advertise.