When did People first use Soap?
The next evening Jimmy came to the supper table, looking very important. He carried a big sheet of paper in his hands, and he could hardly wait for the family to be seated before he began:
”Father, here are just a few questions for you to answer. I told my teacher about our talk last night, and showed her the questions I wrote down. She told the class about it, and every boy and girl had some question to ask too. They asked about a hundred! So Miss Dean let us work out this list together.”
”Jimmy, you rascal,” said Mr. Martin, “let me see that list. When do you expect me to eat my supper? If I answered all those questions my head would feel as empty as a soap bubble! Besides, your classmates might like to hear the answers to their questions, and we can’t invite them all to supper every night.”
”That’s what Miss Dean said,” Jimmy replied, “that the class would like to hear the answers. She thought we might find out some of the answers ourselves in our industrial science period. A lot of the boys have chemical sets, and she said we might have use for them. So maybe I’ll have something interesting to tell you some nights.”
”That’s fine,” said father. “I’ll do my share of answering questions if you’ll do yours.”
”Now,” said mother, “after all this talk, I should like to hear those questions.”
”Read them, Jim,” said father.
These are some of the questions Jimmy read:
What is soap?
How is it made
How does soap make our hands and clothes clean?
Why does soap foam up and make suds?
Why are there so many kinds of soap?
Why are some soaps yellow, some white?
Why do some soaps float?
Is one kind of soap as good as another?
How can we tell what kind is best to buy?
”Thank you, Jimmy,” said mother. “I’m sure I’d like to know the answers to those questions. Soap is needed for so many and such different things, like bathing the baby and washing those hiking clothes of yours, Jimmy; and there are so many kinds, I really find it hard to tell what kinds are best to buy.”
”So let’s have the first question,” went on mother. “Ice cream for dessert,--and we can eat it slowly and listen while father tells us about when people first began to use soap.”
”Hm-m-m,” said father, “that sounds like a fine plan for everybody but me! However, I’ll keep my promise, and I did read a little today to be ready for Master Jim tonight.”
”People of long ago,” father began, “did not keep themselves as clean as we do today, for they did not have our good soaps. How would you like it if, when you went to school each morning, instead of your nice soapy bath you had to use oil and fine sand? That is the way Cleopatra is said to have taken her baths, and she was a queen.”
”Oh, I know about her,” exclaimed Jimmy, quite excited at telling what he knew. “She was queen in Egypt ever so long ago, and that big obelisk in Central Park in New York is called Cleopatra’s Needle.”
”Did she sew with it?” asked Sue, with a giggle.
”She was queen ever so long ago,” said father, paying no attention to Miss Sue. “It was a few years before Christ was born. But about six hundred years before that, people had something which was used as soap. It is mentioned in the Bible. It was not really soap, but a kind of fine earth or clay. So I suppose people washed for many hundreds of years about as Cleopatra did.
”People washed clothes in those days, as they still do in some parts of the world, by beating them up and down in the water at the edge of a stream or pool. This was hard work, and I don’t believe we would have thought the clothes very clean when they were done. Sometimes wash day came only two or three times in a year, so it was a great event. The person in charge of washing the clothes in the king’s palace and the homes of the nobles had an important position. In Cleopatra’s court he was called the Royal Chief Washer. There is an old verse which gives us a picture of washing in Cleopatra’s time:
Neighbor to the crocodile as he swims up stream.
”The chief city in the world at the time of Christ was Rome, which you can find on your map of Italy. A Roman named Pliny, who lived about that time, was very much interested in what the people did every day and in the things they had in their homes to use. We call him “Pliny the Elder” because he had a younger relative also named Pliny who was quite famous. He wrote a book, and in it we may read that the Romans came to know about something which we may really call soap. They learned from a neighboring people called the Gauls how to make it from goat’s tallow and wood ashes.”
”I’m glad I don’t have to bathe my baby with it,” said mother.
”You would not have bathed baby with it in those days,” said father, “if you had been a poor woman. The poorer people did not have it to use, except sometimes to heal skin diseases.
”Pliny lived near the city of Pompeii, and his habit of looking into everything that was going on around him probably caused his death. There came a big eruption of Mount Vesuvius, a volcano near by. Pompeii was buried deep by the ashes that fell. Pliny went too close and he was buried also. After nineteen hundred years these ashes have been dug away enough to show how the city looked when it was buried, and a soap factory is one of the interesting things that have been found.
”For a thousand years or more after Pliny’s time there were a good many people who had dirty faces and hands, as well as clothing. For the use of soap did not become common. Then we find that olives were grown in the south of France, around Marseilles, more olives than could be eaten or used for olive oil. So a factory was started to make soap from the oil of the unused olives.
”Then, about the time that America was discovered by Columbus, England began to make soap. It was not very good soap, but it cost a great deal more money than soap costs now; so the poor people could not afford to buy it.
”People were just beginning to understand how to make quite good soap, cheap enough for everyone to use, when our country was being settled. How we made soap in America in those early days is a story for another evening.”
This is for you:
Where is Egypt?
In what river were Cleopatra’s clothes washed?
What is a “dyke” or dike, and why would this river have dikes?
Why is the River Nile so necessary to Egypt?
What wonders can be seen on the banks of the Nile today which were there in Cleopatra's time?
About how long ago did Pliny write his book which mentioned real soap?
Find Rome and Mount Vesuvius on the map of Italy.
What large city in Italy is near Mount Vesuvius?
Find France and Spain. Can you find Marseilles?
Look at the label on the bottle of olive oil at home. Where did the oil come from? How is olive oil made?
Both olive oil and tallow may be used in making soap. In what way are they alike?
Watch the magazines and begin to cut out soap advertisements. Look in these and in the stores for all the different names of soaps you can find. How many different forms of soaps can you find? What do the labels say about how soap may be used?
Read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, if you would like to find out whether King Arthur and Queen Guinevere knew about soap.
Some Internet Links to help You on Your Way
Maps
Everything You wanted to Know about Soap (but were afraid to ask) - Don't miss the links at the bottom of the page which will take you through the history of soap.
Italy
France
Cleopatra
Cleopatra: From History to Myth
Cleopatra, Lost & Found
Daily Life in Ancient Egypt
Pliny the Elder
Biography
Daily Life in Ancient Rome
Pompeii
Pictures of Pompeii Including where they took their baths!
The Architecture of Pompeii
Explore the Pompeii Interactive Preview
The Gauls
Olive Oil
How is Olive Oil made?
A recipe for Soap using Olive Oil
Where would you like to go next? 
