For ancient Egyptians, appearance was an important issu e. Appearance indicated a persons status, role in a society or political significance, and the hair is an important part of that. Just like today, ancient Egyptians also dyed their hair for beauty, and the most popular color is red, but how did they obtain the color without the technology we have today ?
Scientists found a material called henna in a strand of Egyptian hair from as early as 3400 BC. Research showed that Egyptians used henna to dye their hair red. Henna is still used today. Also there is a body of evidence from paintings that depict the existence of people with red hair, such as the 18th Dynasty Hunutmehet.
Also there were some others means to dye hair, for example, the old Roman dyed hair with lead acetate, they dipped lead comb in the vinegar, and then combed the hair to get black hair, also the mixture of walnut shell and garlic sprouts made the same effect. And Germanic people could get black color from a mixture of suet and plant ash juice.
In China, there were also many methods to dye hair, The Eastern JinDynasty medical scientist Ge Hong wrote that artemisia stelleriana could dye the hair black, which was recorded as a secret in the Palace. And in the “Compendium of Materia Medica” written by Li Shizhen in the Ming Dynasty, there were more than twenty kinds of drugs that could be used to dye hair.
Now we can see that the ancients were also fashional in dyeing hair, and even without advanced technology, they can achieve it though various natural manners too, but still one question, all of them could not solve the color fading, regrettably, which is also a difficult problem today.