The History of the Barbershop: From Ancient Egypt to the Modern Chair

Strip away the centuries and the scene barely changes: one trusted person, one blade, one chair. The history of the barbershop is older and stranger than the spinning pole out front lets on. It runs from copper razors in Egyptian tombs to a gossip club in ancient Rome, through surgeons who pulled teeth between haircuts, to the camera bolted above the chair today. Pull up a seat. This is the whole line, told straight, with the folklore left at the door.

The craft of the barber is roughly 5,000 years old — copper and even gold razors were buried in Egyptian tombs around 3000–2500 BCE — but that figure belongs to shaving, not to the shop. The barbershop as a place, a public room a man walks into for a cut and a conversation, was a Greco-Roman invention: professional barbers reached Rome around 300 BCE, and the open-doored tonstrina became a daily fixture of city life. So the honest answer depends on what you mean. The blade is ancient Egyptian, the shop is Roman, and the famous red-and-white pole is medieval — from the era when one man both cut your hair and let your blood. Everything since — the barber-surgeon, the golden-age hot-towel shave, the throwaway blade, the African-American sanctuary, the smartphone — is the same chair changing shape around the same unchanged craft.

Where the history of the barbershop really begins: Egypt and the blade

It starts with metal. In tombs from around 3000 to 2500 BCE, archaeologists have lifted out copper razors — and a few in gold — some still holding a sharp double edge across five thousand years. One New Kingdom razor was found still carrying the faint marks of the barber's own fingers. These blades traveled in a portable kit: tweezers, a whetstone for honing, a polished bronze mirror, a tube of kohl, all bundled into a rush basket. That little roll is the direct ancestor of the leather tool roll a barber unrolls beside the chair today.

A barber is only ever as good as the edge he keeps — true in copper, true in steel. Grooming in Egypt was not vanity; it was status and ritual cleanliness. The priests serving the temples had to keep their whole body hairless for purity. Herodotus, in his Histories, says they shaved their whole body every other day, so that no lice or any foul thing could touch them as they served the gods. Egyptians, he adds, prized being clean rather than handsome. Someone had to wield that blade. That someone was the barber — not the priest.

Meryma'at, a real man with a real name

We even know one of them. A limestone statue carved around 1332–1279 BCE, from Thebes and now in the Penn Museum, shows a man named Meryma'at, whose title reads “barber in the cult of Amun.” He sits beside his wife, with the god's name on his chest and a prayer for his ka — his soul — carved into the stone. He served the priests; he was not one of them. Nor did he work on priests and pharaohs alone: a wall in the tomb of Userhat (around 1427–1400 BCE) shows ordinary men waiting their turn under the barber's hand — the oldest depicted queue for a haircut anywhere on earth.

A timeline of barbering, from copper to camera

Era	What the barber was	Milestone
Egypt, c. 3000–1300 BCE	Keeper of the blade and ritual cleanliness	Copper & gold razors; Meryma'at, a named temple barber
Babylon, c. 1754 BCE	A trade written into law	Hammurabi's Code protects the barber's mark
Rome, from c. 300 BCE	Public craftsman and host of the city's gossip	The tonstrina — the barbershop — is born
Medieval Europe to 1745	Barber-surgeon: cut hair, pulled teeth, let blood	The red-and-white pole; the 1745 split from surgeons
1903–1904 onward	A trade facing the throwaway blade at home	Gillette's disposable safety razor goes on sale
1980s–today	Craftsman, third place, and online creator	The straight-razor revival and the camera above the chair

How the trade moved from law in Babylon to a shop in Rome

1. Babylon writes the blade into law. In the Code of Hammurabi, around 1754 BCE, Law 226 ruled that a barber who shaved off a slave's identifying mark without permission had his hands cut off. Law 227 sentenced to death anyone who tricked him into it. The barber's blade was carved into one of the first law codes humanity ever wrote.

2. Rome imports the barber. Pliny the Elder, citing Varro, records that professional barbers first came to Rome around 300 BCE, brought from Sicily by one Publius Ticinius Mena. Before that, Romans grew their beards or shaved at home.

3. The shop opens its doors. The barber was the tonsor; his shop was the tonstrina. Open from dawn to mid-afternoon, doors thrown wide, it became a free, cross-class club for news, rumor, and politics — the place a city went to hear what was happening.

4. The first shave becomes a rite. A young Roman's first shave, the depositio barbae, marked his coming of age. The cut hairs were offered to the gods; Nero sealed his own first shavings in a pearl-set gold box and dedicated it on the Capitol.

5. The clean shave becomes a habit, and the trade earns its name. Scipio Aemilianus was reputedly the first Roman to shave every day, and the emperor Augustus never neglected the razor. Centuries later our word “barber” followed the blade itself, from the Latin barba, meaning beard, by way of the Anglo-French barbour around the year 1300.

💡 Barber's tip: to read a real barber pole, ignore the folklore and remember what each color stood for. Red is the blood, white is the clean linen bandage, and the pole itself is the staff a patient gripped so the veins stood up during bloodletting. Treat blue as a later, mostly American flourish, not an ancient meaning. Read it that way and the pole becomes a 300-year-old sign hanging in plain sight.

The barber-surgeon and the bloody pole

For centuries in Europe the man with the sharp blade did far more than cut hair. The barber-surgeon pulled teeth, set bones, lanced boils, and performed bloodletting — the everyday medicine of the age — alongside a haircut and a shave. In London the two trades were formally united in 1540 under Henry VIII as the Company of Barbers and Surgeons. They split apart in 1745, when the surgeons broke away toward what became the Royal College of Surgeons. Barbers kept the razor and the pole; surgeons took the scalpel. The pole itself emerged around the 1680s — red for blood, white for the bandage, the brass ball at the end roughly the basin that caught it. It is a medieval and early-modern sign, never an ancient one, and it has nothing to do with Egypt or Rome.

The golden age, and the blade that ended it

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the golden age of the barbershop. The daily hot-towel straight-razor shave was a male ritual, and the shop was a main-street fixture as familiar as the post office. Then, around 1903–1904, King C. Gillette and William Nickerson brought the disposable double-edge safety blade to market. The fall that followed was slow and multi-causal: cheap shaving at home, then the First World War issuing safety razors to soldiers by the millions, then the longer hair and unisex salons of the 1960s and 70s. Gillette was the start of a long decline, not its single cause — the shop did not die, it thinned out and waited.

The African-American barbershop as sanctuary

One chapter stands on its own. The African-American barbershop became one of the most important Black-owned social, economic, and political institutions in the country: a space a community could own outright, free from outside surveillance. It worked as a newsroom, a debate hall, and an organizing hub through the civil-rights era and well beyond — proof that the barbershop was never only about hair. It was, and is, a room where a community could speak freely on its own ground.

The revival and the digital chair

From the 1980s and 90s onward the craft came back. The straight-razor shave returned, with the hot towel, the scalp and neck massage, and the unhurried masculine ritual; the barbershop was reframed as an experience and a “third place,” not just a transaction. Then, in the 2010s and 20s, the chair got a camera. Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok turned skilled barbers into global creators, their fade tutorials and transformation reels followed by millions. Booking moved online, reputation became visual and worldwide, and the bar on the craft itself rose sharply.

Barbershop myths worth retiring for good

• Myth: Egyptian barbers were priests. | Reality: They served the priests, shaving them for ritual purity. The priests kept themselves hairless; the barber held the blade. He was a craftsman, not a holy man.

• Myth: The barbershop itself is 5,000 years old. | Reality: That figure belongs to shaving and razors. The shop as a public place is Greco-Roman, from around 300 BCE.

• Myth: The barber pole is an ancient symbol. | Reality: It is medieval and early-modern, emerging around the 1680s from the barber-surgeon's bloodletting — never Egyptian or Roman.

• Myth: The blue stripe means veins. | Reality: Treat blue as a later, largely American addition. The settled meaning is red for blood and white for the bandage; the rest is folklore.

• Myth: Gillette killed the barbershop overnight in 1903. | Reality: The safety razor sold from around 1903–1904 and began a slow, multi-causal decline — home shaving, the First World War, and changing styles — not a single knockout blow.

Common questions about the history of the barbershop

The short, sourced answers to what people most often ask about where this trade came from.

How old is barbering?

The craft of barbering and shaving is roughly 5,000 years old: copper and gold razors were buried in Egyptian tombs around 3000–2500 BCE. The barbershop as a public place, however, is younger — a Greco-Roman invention from around 300 BCE.

When was the first barber shop?

The first true barbershops appeared in ancient Rome. Professional barbers arrived around 300 BCE, brought from Sicily by Publius Ticinius Mena according to Pliny the Elder, and the open-doored tonstrina quickly became a daily gathering place.

Why is the barber pole red and white?

Because the early barber was also a surgeon who performed bloodletting. Red stands for the blood, white for the clean linen bandage, and the pole for the staff the patient gripped so the veins stood up. The blue seen on many poles is a later, mostly American addition.

When were barbers also surgeons?

Through the medieval and early-modern period. In London barbers and surgeons were formally united in 1540 under Henry VIII and split in 1745, when surgeons broke away and barbers kept the razor and the pole.

Where does the word barber come from?

From the Latin barba, meaning beard. It reached English through the Anglo-French barbour around the year 1300 — the trade named, quite literally, after the thing it tended.

Did Gillette end the golden age of the barbershop?

It started the decline rather than causing it alone. The disposable safety razor sold from around 1903–1904 and made home shaving cheap, but the First World War and the longer hairstyles of the 1960s and 70s were just as much a part of the long fall.

Strip it all away — the Egyptian copper, the Roman gossip, the bloody pole, the throwaway blade, the smartphone above the mirror — and the same scene remains. One trusted person, one blade, one chair, and a few quiet minutes that belong only to the man sitting in it. The chair has had many shapes over five thousand years; the craft inside it hasn't changed.

At SKRILOV, that's the chair we keep — the present-day heir to a trade that has outlasted empires. If you'd like to sit in that unbroken line, book a chair with us in Nof HaGalil, where every cut still starts with listening, not clippers.