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Female Circumcision in Africa: An Overview

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Leonard J. Kouba  and
Judith Muasher
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Extract

Since the dawn of history, mankind has developed a variety of practices which are intricately related to complex social orders and to traditional codes of behavior. Over the years many of these, especially those with harmful effects, were gradually abandoned while others remained. One of those which still survives is the practice of female circumcision with its long past and its serious health complications (Taba, 1980: 21).

There is no conclusive evidence to indicate where female circumcision first originated and how it was initially performed. Circumcized females have been discovered among the mummies of ancient Egyptians. Herodotus, the Greek historian, found the Egyptians practicing male and female circumcision when he visited their country around the middle of the fifth century B.C. A Greek papyrus in the British Museum, dated 163 B. C., refers to operations performed on girls in Memphis at the age when they received their dowries. Strabo, the Greek geographer, also reported circumcision of girls as a custom he found when visiting Egypt in 25 B. C. (Hosken, 1982). More recently, the German traveller Niebuhr, the sole survivor of a European scientific expedition to Arabia, Egypt, and Syria in the late 1700s, reported that this operation was fairly prevalent (Taba, 1980: 21). Such noted explorers as Sir Richard Burton and Sir Samuel White Baker described female circumcision in their writings from the 1800s (Hosken, 1982).

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 1985 , pp. 95 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1985

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