HAIR, THE. In the Old Testament one of the legal enactments is said to have been : " Ye shall not round off the corners of your hair, nor shalt thou disfigure the corners of thy beard" (Lev. xix. 27). The Israelites were commanded not to cut off or shave the hair about the temples. This had come to be regarded as a heathen custom. We learn from Herodotus (iii. 8) that certain Arab tribes were accustomed to remove these locks at a certain age in honour of their god Orotal, and Jeremiah seems to allude to the custom (ix. 25) when he speaks of ketsutse pe'ah, " those who have the corners of their head polled." But the prohibition in Leviticus is prob ably directed against the practice of offering the hair as a sacrifice. It is likely that in ancient times the Hebrews sacrificed the hair of the head and the beard to some deity (cp. Baruch vi. 20 ff.). Some such custom prevailed widely in the East and in Greece. " When Egyptian boys or girls had recovered from sickness, their parents used to shave the children's heads, weigh the hair against gold or silver, and give the precious metal to the keepers of the sacred beasts, who bought food with it for the animals according to their tastes " (J. G. Frazer). In the worship of the Phoenician goddess Astarte. the sacrifice of women's hair was accepted as a substitute for the sacrifice of their chastity (cp. Lev. xix. 29). In some parts of Greece maidens before marriage sacrificed their hair to Artemis. Boys went to Delphi to offer their hair (the seat of strength) to Apollo. Else where men dedicated locks of their hair to Zeus. Similar customs have been noted among primitive folk in modern times. Thus the Australians deposit hair (as the seat of human strength) with the dead. The use of hair as a charm may be explained on the principle of imitative magic. In ancient Mexico the goddess of maize was
called " the long-haired mother." During her festival " the women wore their long hair unbound, shaking and tossing it in the dances which were the chief feature in the ceremonial, in order that the tassel of the maize might grow in like profusion, that the grain might be correspondingly large and flat, and that the people might have abundance " (E. J. Payne, quoted by J. G. Frazer). The natives in Western Australia blow hair plucked from their thighs and armpits is the direction from which they desire rain. In the case of the Hebrew Nazirite, the hair was allowed to grow long until the period of his vow had expired, when. we may sup pose, the hair was offered as a sacrifice (Numbers vi. 5). " As soon as a man takes the vow to poll his locks at the sanctuary, the hair is a consecrated thing, and, as such, inviolable till the moment for discharging the vow arrives; and so the flowing locks of the Hebrew Nazirite or of a Greek votary like Achilles are the visible marks of his consecration " (W. R. Smith). Among the Hindus the hair was regarded as the special seat of bodily strength. Indeed, evidence has been collected which " appears to indicate that the belief of a man's strength and vigour being contained in his hair is by no means confined to the legend of Samson, but is spread all over the world" (R. V. Russell). See S. R. Driver and H. A. White, The Book of Leviticus. in " Sacred Books of the Old Testament," 1S9S; B. Baentsch, Numeri, 1903; Eneyel. Bibl.; W. Robertson Smith, R.S.; J. G. Frazer, G.B., Part I., vol. i., p. 2S ff.