No single person or civilization “invented” circumcision. The oldest physical evidence points to ancient Egypt, where carvings depicting the procedure date back roughly 4,400 years, but the practice almost certainly predates those records. Over millennia, different cultures on separate continents adopted circumcision independently for reasons ranging from religious covenant to coming-of-age ritual to Victorian-era health anxieties. The story of who started it is really the story of why it kept being reinvented.
The Earliest Evidence: Ancient Egypt
The oldest known depiction of circumcision appears in a bas-relief from the necropolis of Saqqara in Egypt, dated to roughly 2400 BCE. The carving shows a flint-knife circumcision along with an inscription reading “the ointment is to make it acceptable,” which historians interpret as an early form of pain relief, possibly a cooling stone pressed against the skin. A separate relief on the sarcophagus of Ankh-ma-Hor at Saqqara, dated to around 2345 to 2182 BCE, shows young men being restrained while a priest performs the cut as a ritual required before entering the priesthood.
Some references in Egyptian temple hieroglyphics suggest circumcision may stretch even further back, to around 4000 BCE, though those dates are less firmly established than the Saqqara carvings. What is clear is that in Egypt, circumcision was not a medical procedure in the modern sense. It was a rite tied to religious status and spiritual purity, reserved initially for priests and elite males rather than the general population.
The Abrahamic Religions: Covenant and Cleanliness
For roughly a third of the world’s population, circumcision traces back to a single figure: Abraham. In Judaism, the practice is rooted in the Covenant of Circumcision (Brit Milah), recorded in Genesis 17:10–14, where God instructs Abraham that every male child shall be circumcised as “an outward physical sign of the eternal covenant” between God and the Jewish people. Jewish tradition treats this as one of the most universally observed commandments, with Jewish male infants typically circumcised on the eighth day of life. Circumcision rates among Jewish men in the United States, Israel, and the United Kingdom exceed 98%.
Islam also credits Abraham as the first person to perform circumcision. In Islamic tradition, circumcision is considered one of the acts of “fitrah,” a term describing the natural disposition and instinct of human creation. The Prophet Muhammad listed it alongside basic grooming practices like trimming nails and cutting hair. Muslim circumcision accounts for more than two-thirds of all circumcision performed globally, making it by far the largest driver of the practice worldwide.
The motivations differ subtly between the two faiths. Judaism frames circumcision as a binding spiritual contract, so central that an uncircumcised man faces “kareit,” a form of spiritual separation, regardless of how observant he is otherwise. Islam frames it more as an act of religious cleanliness and continuity with the prophetic tradition, highly recommended rather than absolutely mandatory, though in practice it is nearly universal among Muslim men.
Rites of Passage in African Cultures
Circumcision did not spread across Africa solely through Islam. Dozens of ethnic groups practice it as an indigenous rite of passage with no connection to Abrahamic religion. Among the AmaXhosa of South Africa, the ceremony called ulwaluko marks the transition from boyhood (ubukhwenkwe) to manhood (ubudoda), described as a moment of bravery and sacrifice. The VhaVenḓa consider it one of the most important rituals in a boy’s life, believing it grants social status within the community. The Bapedi call it lebollo, the Vatsonga call it ngoma, and the Batswana call it bogwera.
Across these traditions, certain themes recur. The shedding of blood on the soil is understood as connecting the young man to his ancestors and to the land where he was born. Completion of the rite brings new responsibilities: the right to marry, to start a family, and to be held to adult moral standards. Among the Senegalese, circumcision carries an explicitly spiritual dimension. The initiated male is given the name “Njulli,” meaning prayer, and is expected to meet the spiritual purity required for religious communion. These practices likely developed independently over thousands of years, suggesting that something about the act of circumcision, its pain, its permanence, its visible mark, made it a natural fit for ceremonies meant to transform a boy into a man.
Victorian Medicine and the Western Adoption
Circumcision in English-speaking countries like the United States, Britain, and Australia has an entirely different origin story, one rooted not in religion or ritual but in 19th-century medical theory. Victorian-era doctors believed in something called “reflex neurosis,” the idea that irritation in one part of the body could send nerve impulses to completely unrelated organs and cause serious disease. The foreskin was seen as a prime source of such irritation.
Masturbation made things worse, at least in the Victorian imagination. It was considered not just morally wrong but physically dangerous, thought to deplete the body’s vital energy and cause everything from epilepsy to insanity. Circumcision was promoted as a cure. Doctors reported remarkable success in treating disorders supposedly linked to masturbation or penile irritation, and word spread through medical circles. By the late 1800s, routine infant circumcision had been adopted by many educated families in Britain and, eventually, across the United States.
The reflex neurosis theory was eventually abandoned, but the practice it spawned persisted. In Britain, circumcision rates dropped sharply after 1949, when a British Medical Journal article concluded the procedure was not medically justified. In the United States, the decline came much later and more gradually.
Where Circumcision Stands Today
About 30% of men worldwide are circumcised. The practice varies enormously by region. In the United States, 75% of men aged 15 and older are circumcised, though newborn rates have been falling steadily. A Johns Hopkins study covering 2012 to 2022 found that the share of male newborns circumcised in U.S. hospitals dropped from 54.1% to 49.3% over that decade, with the steepest declines among families in the highest-income ZIP codes and those with private insurance. Only 6% of males in the United Kingdom are circumcised. The practice is uncommon across most of Central and South America, Europe, and Asia, with notable exceptions in South Korea and the Philippines.
The modern medical case for circumcision centers on disease prevention. Three large clinical trials in Africa found that circumcision reduces the risk of female-to-male HIV transmission by roughly 60%, a finding significant enough that the World Health Organization endorsed voluntary medical male circumcision in 2007. The American Academy of Pediatrics has stated that the health benefits of newborn circumcision, including lower rates of urinary tract infections in the first year of life, reduced risk of penile cancer, and decreased transmission of certain sexually transmitted infections, outweigh the risks, though not enough to recommend universal circumcision.
Circumcision is also still used to treat specific medical problems. When scar tissue causes the foreskin to tighten so it cannot retract (a condition called phimosis), surgery is sometimes necessary. Most other foreskin-related conditions, including infections and inflammation, are typically managed with less invasive treatments first.
Why the Practice Has Persisted
The durability of circumcision across so many unrelated cultures likely comes down to its versatility as a symbol. It is permanent, visible to the community that matters, and physically demanding enough to carry meaning. For ancient Egyptians it marked entry into the priesthood. For Jews it sealed a covenant with God. For the AmaXhosa it proved a boy’s readiness to become a man. For Victorian doctors it promised protection against disease and moral decay. Each culture found its own reason to adopt essentially the same act.
That pattern continues. The 21st-century push for circumcision in sub-Saharan Africa is driven by HIV prevention data, not by religion or tradition. In the United States, the practice persists partly through medical recommendation and partly through cultural inertia, with fathers often choosing for their sons what was chosen for them. The reasons keep changing, but the practice, now at least 4,400 years old by the archaeological record, keeps finding new justifications to survive.