Ancient Eyebrow Evolution

Eyebrow fashions for women have undergone a lot of changes in the past century. Even in the past couple of decades, there have been major transformations, from the most extreme version of the 90s brow, a horrifically thin and straight drawn-on line, to the most extreme version of the current style, a horrifically huge and blocky drawn-on shape. And in each age, we swear that our own best version of the eyebrow is the most flattering and beautiful one. Later generations will surely judge us.

Brow styles changed over time in the ancient world as well, though without media being produced and distributed so quickly, they were certainly slower to change. But ancient people did have art that they could use to tell them what was the most beautiful, even when they didn't come into contact with the trendsetting upper classes themselves every day. I thought I'd track some changes over time (and place) in women's eyebrow shapes.

It's sometimes hard to tell how much the eyebrows we see in art accurately represented the way real women groomed their brows. After all, as far as we know most ancient artists were male, and typically men don't pay as close attention to the fine details of feminine beauty trends as women do (with exceptions, of course). I imagine that portraits meant to realistically portray their subjects, at least to some extent, are the most likely to have realistic eyebrows. Those artists had to closely observe details of a particular woman's appearance in order to create a recognizable portrait. On the other hand, generic, fictional, idealized, or mythological images might be less specific about eyebrow styles, other than to design faces that would have been attractive to most viewers.

I've arranged the photos below in roughly chronological order, within each geographical area. I thought about making a collage, but there's so much variation in the sizes of the images that it would be tricky. Also, I haven't linked to sources for each of these works of art, in part because a lot of them are my own photos. If you'd like more information, please ask!

Egypt

Dynastic Egypt

Generally, the eyebrow shape we see in traditional ancient Egyptian art (on both men and women) has a smooth, round arch that tapers toward the tail. In a lot of examples, the thin tail curves back up slightly. This is an eyebrow shape that I can see most women today being pretty happy with.

Roman Egypt

In Egypt under Roman rule, portraits of the deceased painted in encaustic on wooden panels, called mummy portraits (or Fayum/Fayoum portraits from the area where many of them were found), became popular. I had a hard time choosing just a few examples to include here, because there are so many amazing eyebrows. Seriously, do a Google image search and bask in all the beautiful faces.

The eyebrows on these women tend to be quite full, with a pointed arch, but not too meticulously groomed.

Greece

Bronze Age (Minoan) Crete and the Aegean Islands

In Minoan art, women and girls have eyebrows with a round arch near the nose that taper to a fine point at the tail. They're pretty similar to Egyptian eyebrows, which isn't a huge surprise considering the influence of Egyptian art on the Bronze Age Mediterranean world. I especially love the detail in the first painting below of the individual hairs poking up above the line of the brow. It looks like the technique that a lot of women use today, where they brush their brows upward to make them look full and natural while creating definition on the lower edge.

Archaic Greece

Faces in Archaic Greek art are very stylized and homogeneous, so it's hard to say how much real women's eyebrows resembled these. Archaic eyebrows tend to be smooth, symmetrical, thin arcs.

Classical Greece

In this period, brows are low, close to the eye, and fairly straight, often following the contour of the top of the eye. Again, they seem pretty stylized, so I'm not sure how much they reflect reality.

Rome

Early Imperial Rome

Women's eyebrows from the first century of the Roman Empire tend to have a gentle, symmetrical curve. Nothing too flashy here.

High Imperial Rome

By about a century later, eyebrows seem to have become more important. Now we have sculptors carving in individual hairs, rather than just leaving the brows to be painted on. And (maybe surprisingly to many of us) the unibrow comes into fashion. Texts from this period talk admiringly about women's "long" eyebrows, and we see them in portraits too. Fashionable, upper class women removed other body hair, but apparently left eyebrows that met in the middle (or nearly did) alone.

So there we go! Obviously this doesn't cover every place and period around the the Mediterranean in antiquity, but there are a lot of different eyebrows in this selection alone.

If you had to choose one of these times/places to live, based on eyebrows alone, where would you send your time machine?

Is there lead in your foundation? If you're an ancient Roman, read this now!

So called "Sappho," probably a portrait of a Roman woman. Wall painting from Pompeii, now on display in the Naples Archaeological Museum. 
First century CE. Photo by Carole Raddato (corrected to enhance original colors).

Most ancient women, as far as we know, liked to make their skin look as pale as possible, like lots of other women in history have done.  To be more precise, in ancient texts the male authors equate paleness with prettiness. We also have evidence for women using makeup to look whiter, but no evidence for ancient bronzer. The usual explanation for this historical beauty ideal links it to wealth--rich ladies didn't have to work outside, so they would naturally have lighter skin than poorer working women. In practice, of course, there had to have been a whole range of skin tones at both ends of the economic spectrum, but wealthier women had the added advantage of being able to afford makeup and the free time required to apply it and touch it up, so they could look as pale as they wanted all the time.

This preference meant that ancient Roman foundations had whitening properties. The most common formula used white lead, or cerussa in Latin, which is a lead carbonate produced by putting lead shavings in vinegar. This process produced a white powder that was then formed into cakes which were used by painters and in makeup. Pliny the Elder said that the best white lead came from Rhodes. Imported beauty products have always had an extra appeal, and for some reason (coughorientalismcough), people more often than not seem to think that people who live futher east are better at luxury and beauty.

It could have been applied as a powder foundation, then, or maybe mixed with a cream. White lead probably would have had a mattifying effect, though the Romans were really into radiant skin, so maybe the good stuff also had some reflective properties. Certainly it would have been "brightening."

It's hard to know if Roman women typically applied their white base in a thick, opaque layer, or if they preferred a sheer wash that would just lighten their complexion a shade or two. Paintings of Roman women from Pompeii, like the one above, tend to show pale, but not pure white, skin.

I also wonder if white lead might have had some sunscreen properties, which would have helped the skin actually to become lighter over time--or, at least, to prevent it from getting darker. I'm not sure how to figure that out, though, so if anyone with a scientific background would like to weigh in, I'd be happy to hear what you think. I haven't been able to find any information about the sunscreen properties of lead.

The Romans were totally aware that this stuff was poisonous and actually damaged the skin, making it look worse over time, but they used it anyway. We shouldn't be surprised. It's kind of like people in the last couple of decades who've insisted on tanning, because they like the way a tan looks, despite being fully aware that they're seriously increasing their risk of skin cancer and also damaging their skin, ultimately looking older than they really are. Logic doesn't often overcome the power of beauty ideals, and obviously some people would rather look "ideal" now than worry about what might happen later. (I get that people sometimes tan for reasons other than aesthetics, and that tan skin as an ideal only applies to some groups of people, and that lots of people just don't care about aging skin. I use tanning as an example here because it seems like the closest parallel--a well-known potential risk coming into conflict with beauty standards.)

I have plans for future posts that recreate ancient makeup looks and suggest products you can use that are similar to ancient ones, but I think I'll skip this one!