The First Soap

This certainly cannot be documented; but it is quite possible soap could have been discovered

even in prehistoric times. Early people cooking their meats over fires might have noticed after

a rainstorm there was a strange foam around the remains of the fire and its ashes.

It is recorded that the Sumerians were making soap around 2500 B.C .It gives Founds of

Recipes from the Sumerian on a plate with cuneiform writing

In the years about 600 B.C. the Egytpians made the next Soap .They made a Mixture of

animal fats and ash from burned sea plants .Records show that ancient Egyptians bathed

regularly. The Ebers Papyrus, a medical document from about 1500 B.C., describes

combining animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to form a soap-like material used for

treating skin diseases, as well as for washing

Pliny, the Roman historian, described soap being made from goat's tallow and causticized

 wood ashes.He appears the word "soap" first in a European language in the Historia

Naturalis , which he discusses the manufacture of soap from tallow and ashes, but the only use

he mentions for it is as a pomade for hair; he mentions rather disapprovingly that among the

Gauls and Germans, men are likelier to use it than women.He also wrote of common salt

being added to make the soap hard. The ruins at Pompeii revealed a soap factory complete

with finished bars.

The Romans are well known for their public baths, generally soap was not used for personal

cleaning. To clean the body the Greeks and then the Romans would rub the body with olive

oil and sand. A scraper, called a strigil, was then used to scrape off the sand and olive oil also

removing dirt, grease, and dead cells from the skin leaving it clean. Afterwards the skin was

rubbed down with salves prepared from herbs.

The Celts, who produced their soap from animal fats and plant ashes, named the product

saipo, from which the word soap is derived. The importance of soap for washing and cleaning

was apparently not recognized until the 2nd century A.D. ; the Greek physician Galen

mentions it as a medicament and as a means of cleansing the body. Previously soap had been

used as medicine.

After the fall of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, there was little soap making done or

use of it in the European Dark Ages. In the Byzantine Empire, the remains of the Roman

world in the eastern Mediterranean area, and in the expanding Arab world soap was made and

used. Around the 8th century soap making was revived in Italy and Spain.

The writings attributed to the 8th-century Arab savant Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber) repeatedly

mention soap as a cleansing agent. The Arabs made the soap from vegetable oil as olive oil or

some aromatic oils such as thyme oil. Sodium Lye (Al-Soda Al-Kawia) NaOH was used for

the first time and the formula hasn't changed from the current soap sold in the market. From

the beginning of the 7th century soap was produced in Nablus (Palestine), Kufa (Iraq) and

Basra (Iraq). Arabian Soap was perfumed and colored, some of the soaps were liquid and

others were hard. They also had special soap for shaving. It was commercially sold for 3

Dirhams (0.3 Dinars) a piece in 981 AD.