When Did People Start Paying Professionals to Cut Their Hair?

[HeyHomie]

A quick search at biblegateway.com reveals only one seemingly relevant passage.

Paul stayed on in Corinth for some time. Then he left the brothers and sailed for Syria, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila. Before he sailed, he had his hair cut off at Cenchrea because of a vow he had taken.
Acts 18:18 New International Version

The sentence is written in the reflexive, which seems to indicate to me that someone other than Paul took scissors (or whatever they had in the New Testament) to Paul’s head, rather than Paul doing it himself. The passage does not mention if he paid someone else to do it, or who that someone was, or whatever.

My WAG is that, in Biblical and pre-Biblical times, hair-cutting was something of a religious affair and was thus done by a priestly personage as part of a ceremony. But I could be way off.

Then there’s also the likelihood that the woman of the house was in charge of cutting the hair of her husband and children, leaving me to believe that women probably cut each other’s hair. Again, just a WAG.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Romans had something akin to professional barbers, as all those busts I’ve seen of Caesar and the like have such nicely trimmed hair. But then again, that brings us back to the whole religious ceremony/woman of the house issue.

So, does history record the first professional barber?

And when were scissors, as we know them, invented?

[HeyHomie]

By the way, this Wikipedia article says

For thousands of years men used to go to the barber to be shaved.

…but does not elaborate.

[Fear_Itself]

This site has many interesting details on the history of Barbering, beginning with prehistory and continuing through the practices of the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and on up to the present day.

It may surprise you to know that the earliest records of barbers show that they were the foremost men of their tribe. They were the medicine men and the priests. But primitive man was very superstitious and the early tribes believed that both good and bad spirits, which entered the body through the hairs on the head, inhabited every individual. The bad spirits could only be driven out of the individual by cutting the hair, so various fashions of hair cutting were practiced by the different tribes and this made the barber the most important man in the community. In fact, the barbers in these tribal days arranged all marriages and baptized all children. They were the chief figures in the religious ceremonies. During these ceremonies, the hair was allowed to hang loosely over the shoulders so that the evil spirits could come out. After the dancing, the long hair was cut in the prevailing fashion by the barbers and combed back tightly so that the evil spirits could not get in or the good spirits get out.