The Babylonian Talmud, in three separate locations, describes to us via a story the hairstyle of the High Priest in the Second Temple in Jerusalem. The Talmud says:
Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 22b
מאי “כסום יכסמו את ראשיהם” (יחזקאל מד:כ)? תנא כמין תספורת לוליינית. מאי תספורת לוליינית? אמר רב יהודה אמר שמואל תספורתא יחידאה? היכי דמי? אמר רב אשי ראשו של זה בצד עיקרו של זה. שאלו את רבי איזהו תספורת של כהן גדול? אמר להן צאו וראו מתספורת של בן אלעשה. תניא רבי אומר לא על חנם פיזר בן אלעשה את מעותיו אלא כדי להראות בו תספורת של כהן גדול.
What is the meaning of, “They (i.e. the priests) shall only trim their heads” (Ezekiel 44:20)? – A Tanna taught: “Haircut in the Julian style.” What was that? – Rav Yehudah said in Shmuel’s name (circa 220-250 CE): “A unique manner of hairdressing.” But what was it like? Rav Ashi said (circa 400-420 CE): “The ends of one row [of hair] lay alongside the roots of the next.”
Rabbi (circa 200-220 CE) was asked: “In what fashion was the hair of the High Priest cut?” He answered: “Go and observe the haircut of Ben Elasah (Rabbi’s son-in-law) (circa 200-200 CE).” It has been taught: “Not for nothing did Ben Elasah expend money so lavishly upon his hairdressing, but to display the High-Priestly fashion.”
Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 51a
מאי בן אלעשה? דתניא לא לחנם פיזר בן אלעשה את מעותיו אלא להראות בהן תספורת של כהן גדול, דכתיב (יחזקאל מד:כ) “כסום יכסמו את ראשיהם.” תנא כעין לולינית. מאי לולינית. אמר רב יהודה תספרתא יחידתא. היכי דמי? אמר רבא ראשו של זה בצד עיקרו של זה, והיינו תספורת של כהן גדול.
What is [known of] Ben Elasah (200-220 CE)? — It has been taught: “Ben Elasah did not disburse his money for nothing, but that he may have achieve the High Priest’s style of hair-dressing, as it is written, “They shall only trim their heads. (Ezekiel 44:20)” It was taught: “[That means] in the Julian fashion.” What was the Julian style? — Rav Yehudah said: “A unique style of hairdressing.” What was it? — Ravah said (circa 300-330 CE): “The end [of one row of hair] reaching the roots of the other, and such was the hairdressing fashion of the High Priest.“
Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 9b
משנה: לא ישב אדם לפני הספר סמוך למנחה עד שיתפלל.
גמרא: דאמר רבי יהושע בן לוי כיון שהגיע זמן תפלת המנחה אסור לאדם שיטעום כלום קודם שיתפלל תפלת המנחה. לא. לעולם סמוך למנחה גדולה, ובתספורת בן אלעשה.
Mishna: One does not sit down before the barber, close to the time of the afternoon prayer, unless he has already said his prayer.
Gemara: Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levi said: “As soon as it is time for the afternoon prayer one may not eat anything before he has recited the afternoon prayer.” No. After all [it means] near the early afternoon prayer (about 1 pm, with a few hours still left to pray), but the reference is to a haircut in the fashion of Ben Elasah.
We can deduce from these three sources a few details about the hairstyle of the High Priest:
- It was called Julian Style.
- It was very expensive.
- It took a few hours (at least two) to make.
- The hairstyle was shaped in such a way that the tip of one lock of hair touched the root of the next.
In addition to these basic points we have to assume that although the sources describing the hairstyle, such as Ravah and Rav Ashi, who are making the statement 250 and 350 years, respectively, after the Second Temple was destroyed (in 70 CE), the hairstyle that they are describing was prevalent sometime during the Temple period, most probably during its last years. As can be seen from the story, by the time of Ben Elasah, Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi’s son-in-law (200-220 CE), it was already unknown, strange, and definitely out of style. So in order to try to identify what this hairstyle was we need to focus on the time period between 50-70 CE, the last two decades of the Temple. As I already have shown in a previous article on the Temple tiles, we can generally trust the statements of later Amoraim about the details of the Temple despite the fact that the were said many hundreds of years after the fact.
The fact that the hairstyle was called Julian points to the fact that a Roman official by the name Julianus (not Julius!) wore it and did something important that would prompt the Jews to call this hairstyle after him. It is important to note that in the Hebrew/Aramaic text of the Talmud the word Julian is spelled Lulian (לולינית). It has been already pointed out by many scholars, including Marcus Jastrow in his dictionary, and by Alexander Kohut in Aruch Hashalem that Jews modified the Roman name Julianus and pronounced it Lulianus in a later time. This can be proven from the fact that the Jerusalem Talmud (Nedarim 3:2, Vilan Edition Daf 9a) in its vague description of the invasion of Persia and the Battle of Ctesiphon by the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate, in 363 CE, calls him King Lulianus, and so from there we know that Lulianus is defintiely Julianus, as well as Lulian is definitely Julian. I will discuss that source in greater detail in a follow up article.
I would like to propose a reason why the Jews modified the name Julian into Lulian, as it is recorded in the Talmud in many places. It is a play on words from the Greek word λάλος (Lalos) sometimes spelled λάλας (Lalas), which means talkative, chatty or a babbler. See Liddell-Scott Greek-English Dictionary, entry λάλας. In fact, this word appears in the Babylonian Talmud (Avodah Zarah 18b) in a judaized form – לוליון (Lulayon), meaning little babbler or little joker. See Aruch Hashalem, entry לוליון. You may wonder what being a babbler has to do with the name Julianus, which would cause it to be corrupted into Lulianus. My theory is that this corruption took place in the 4th century during the reign of the Roman Emperor, Julian the Apostate (361-363 CE). He was a philosopher in the Neoplatonic style, which was esoteric and out of date during his lifetime, and a prolific writer. He clearly pissed off a lot of people of when he reverted Christianity as a state religion back to paganism. I would guess that the people joked about him and called him babbler as an insult to his philosophy.
Also, a particular event may have caused the Jews to specifically call him a babbler. In 363 CE, right before Julian left Antioch to launch his campaign against Persia, in keeping with his effort to foster religions other than Christianity, and Judaism in particular because it had sacrificial rite just like paganism, he ordered the Temple in Jerusalem to be rebuilt, as described by the Roman historian, and a friend of Julian, Ammianus Marcellinus, who wrote the following (Res Gestae, 23.1.2–3):
Julian thought to rebuild at an extravagant expense the proud Temple once at Jerusalem, and committed this task to Alypius of Antioch. Alypius set vigorously to work, and was seconded by the governor of the province; when fearful balls of fire, breaking out near the foundations, continued their attacks, till the workmen, after repeated scorchings, could approach no more: and he gave up the attempt.
There is a theory that what caused the fires and the destruction of the project was the earthquake in Galilee in 363 CE. It see,s that Jews were enthusiastic about the rebuilding of the Temple, since Christian historians, Ambrose (Epistles 1, 40:14-15), Sozomenus (Historia Ecclesiastica 5:22) and Bar Hebraeus (Chronography 63), all mention riots between Jews, who wanted it rebuilt, and Christians, who wanted to stop it, all over the Land of Israel and Syria in connection with the failed rebuilding of the Temple. For more information on this event and its consequences see: Adler, Michael. “The Emperor Julian and the Jews.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 5, no. 4 (1893): 591-651.
My theory is that after the failure of the rebuilding of the Temple, the Jews decided to call Julianus, Lulianus, meaning “the babbler”, or more specifically “big-talker”, because he promised to build the Temple and then failed, and so did not keep his promise. Once they started calling him that, the name Julianus in general was changed to Lulianus and all other people who shared his name were called Lulian.
I would like to propose a theory about who the person after whom this Julian hairstyle was named after. Josephus mentions a Roman Procurator of Judaea during the First Jewish War 66-70 CE, by the name Marcus Antonius Julianus, mentioned in Josephus, War 6.4.3. Josephus says, that Titus called Julianus as part of a committee to advice him what to do with the Temple, destroy it or keep it. Josephus does not say what Julianus advised Titus. But if I were to guess that he advised not to destroy the Temple, then he may have been revered a bit by later generations of Jews. Also since he was procurator during the last four years of the Temple, his hair style may have been associated with the hairstyle of the High Priest. A Roman historian, Minucius Felix (Octavius 33.4), mentions that Julianus wrote a history of the Judaean War called De Judaeis, but that work has been lost, so nothing besides this is known about him. Unfortunately we do not have a bust or even coins of Marcus Antonius Julianus, so we do not know what he looked like. The theory remains just that, a theory.
However, we have more luck with knowing what the Julian hairstyle may have actually looked like. I wrote an email to Janet Stephens, a hairstylist at Studio 921 Salon in Baltimore, MD, who also happens to be an experimental archaeologist and an expert in historical hairdressing, who successfuly recreated on models a few different Roman hairstyles. She wrote to me in a personal communication the following description of the hairstyle based on the description of this hairstyle in the Talmud.
The description of the “tip of the curl touching the root of the curl next to it” sounds like a layered haircut, fairly short. Visualize the curls vertically , rather than horizontally.
As soon as I saw her description it struck me that it is very plausible that the hairstyle that is being described is Emperor Nero’s hairstyle.
Based on my assumption that the Julian hairstyle should be dated to the last years of the Temple, this would put it into the Late Neronian (66-68 CE) – Early Flavian (68-70 CE) periods. We do have some busts of Nero where he is shown with kind of flat curls that look like were layered tip to end, vertically. And then after him everyone else copied it, so it is very palusible that Governor Julianus had the same hairstyle as his emperor, Nero. Also, the Neronian period was prime time recording period for the Talmud to record stories about the High Priest in the Temple as known from other Talmudic descriptions of coins, such as the Neronian Selah and Tyrian “Jerusalemite” Shekel, as well as Herod’s reconstruction of the Temple, which was completed only during Nero’s reign. It seems that Nero himself copied this hairstyle from street actors whom he liked to imitate.
Roman historian Suetonius, in his description of Nero’s hair, says (Life of Nero 51):
He was utterly shameless in the care of his person and in his dress, always having his hair arranged in tiers of curls.
According to a recent article (Haas, Norbert, Francoise Toppe, and Beate M. Henz. “Hairstyles in the arts of Greek and Roman antiquity.” In Journal of Investigative Dermatology Symposium Proceedings, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 298-300. Elsevier, 2005.), they described the styling method of Nero’s haircut in the following manner:
Nero’s curls were corrugated with crimping tongs and carefully piled on each other in several rows.
It would be appear that this description of Nero’s hairstyle closely resembles the Talmud’s description of “the ends of one row [of hair] lay alongside the roots of the next.” It clearly can be seen on Nero’s busts that have survived.
It was not only the emperor who wore this hairstyle. Below is a photo of a bust of a Gallo-Roman youth who wore the same hairstyle in Gaul (modern France). Clearly Nero’s hairstyle has spread around the empire during this time period.
After the death of Nero the hairstyle continued to be in use during the reign of Vespasian as can be seen from a few contemporary depictions of young Domitian. By the time Domitian became emperor in 81 CE, the Neronian hairstyle went out of style and Domitian is already depicted with a much simple Flavian hairstyle.
So in conclusion it would seem that this hairstyle lasted for about a decade from about 64-73 CE, during the reigns of Nero and Vespasian, coinciding with the last years of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, where it was most probably was worn by the High Priest, who tried to copy the Roman Emperor, who in turn copied a street performer. How ironic life can be.
For more details on the Neronian hairstyle see Pollini, John. Two Bronze Portrait Busts of Slave Boys from a Shrine of Cobannus in Gaul. J. Paul Getty Museum, 2001, in Studia Varia From the J. Paul Getty Museum, vol. 2.
- Haas, Norbert, Francoise Toppe, and Beate M. Henz. “Hairstyles in the arts of Greek and Roman antiquity.” In Journal of Investigative Dermatology Symposium Proceedings, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 298-300. Elsevier, 2005.
- Pollini, John. Two Bronze Portrait Busts of Slave Boys from a Shrine of Cobannus in Gaul. J. Paul Getty Museum, 2001, in Studia Varia From the J. Paul Getty Museum, vol. 2.
- Adler, Michael. “The Emperor Julian and the Jews.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 5, no. 4 (1893): 591-651.
- Bradbury, Scott. “Julian’s pagan revival and the decline of blood sacrifice.” Phoenix 49, no. 4 (1995): 331-356.