How Egyptians used gel and curling tongs to look their best 3,500 years ago

By Sarah Graham 

Ancient Egyptians used hair gel to style their locks in everyday life, researchers have found.
A study of male and female mummies has found fashion-conscious Egyptians made use of a fat-based product to keep their hair in place.

They used the styling gel on both long and short hair, tried to curl their hair with tongs and even plaited it in hair extensions to lengthen their tresses. It is thought they used these methods in both life and death, with corpses being styled to make sure they looked good in the afterlife. 

The incredible discovery was made by archaeological scientists who studied hair samples of 18 male and female mummies, aged from four to 58 years old.

The team, from the KNH Centre of Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester, was led by Dr Natalie McCreesh who studied the mummies as part of her PhD.
Using light and electron microscopes, they found that nine of the mummies had coated their hair in the fatty substance, which is thought to be a beauty product.

Some of the mummies, which were artificially preserved, show the gel was used to prepare the body for the afterlife. But others, which were preserved naturally in dry sand, prove the product must also have been used in everyday life by the vain Egyptians. Bizarrely, even in the artificially-preserved bodies the hair did not contain resins or embalming materials, suggesting the hair was styled separately to the mummification process.