The oldest recorded verifiable practice of circumcision comes from the Egyptians, circa 2400 BC. See below:
http://www.egyptancient.net/images/circoncisione.jpg
In Circumcision: A History Of The World’s Most Controversial Surgery, David Gollaher writes the following (Emphasis is mine):
"THE GENESIS OP CIRCUMCISION, LIKE MAGIC AND RELIGION, IS IMMEMORIAL. Evidence of its antiquity trails off in two distant streams. One of these flows from tribal societies, most famously, certain groups of Australian Aborigines, who have practiced totemic genital surgery for uncounted millennia. The other stream, far richer in historical materials yet equally mysterious with respect to its source, is a tributary into the mainstream of Western culture from the recesses of ancient Egypt.
The world’s oldest account of circumcision is an image in an Egyptian tomb. On the West Bank of the Nile, across from Memphis, home of the legendary genius, architect and physician Imhotep, stands the necropolis of Saqqara. Even by Egyptian standards Saqqara is archaic, built sometime around 2400 B.C. during the Old Kingdom’s fifth dynasty…
The historical trail begins with them. Yet what the Saqqara figures document was not the inception of a new ritual but a tradition far older than history itself. Mummified remains exhumed elsewhere in Egypt, predating Saqqara, have been subjected to X-ray scans, computerized tomography, and carbon dating. Some of these ancient corpses reveal indications of circumcision performed perhaps as early as 4000 B.C. …
Within the magico-religious framework of Egyptian science and medicine, circumcision apparently was a ritual marking the passage from youth to manhood. The transition was profound. Beyond the physical alteration of anatomy, the ritual entailed admittance into divine mysteries—secrets revealed only to the initiated. The content of these mysteries remains elusive, though they must have involved myths, prayers, and incantations central to Egyptian religion.The Egyptian Book of the Dead, for example, tells of the sun god Ra performing a self-circumcision, whose blood created two minor guardian deities…
Some scholars have guessed that the procedure was limited to the elite: that in its early phase, circumcision was a mark of superior distinction reserved primarily for the priests, beginning with the pharaohs themselves, who were worshiped as the high priest of every god. In any case, however, it was not applied consistently. X-ray scans of Pharaoh Ahmose from the sixteenth century B.C. show that he died, a mature adult, uncircumcised. Elsewhere, ruins contain depictions of circumcised carpenters. The principle of selection remains elusive…
What did circumcision mean? Doubtless it was partly about purification. Purity was an Egyptian obsession, and one of medicine’s main purposes was to purify, physically and spiritually.
In the view of ancients who emulated the Egyptians, circumcision seems to have been not just a matter of hygiene but of moral, spiritual, and intellectual refinement. Origen, the influential biblical scholar and theologian of Alexandria, thought that Egyptians used circumcision to distinguish priests and intellectuals who committed themselves to the highest learning. “For among Egyptians,” he wrote, “no one devoted himself to the study of astronomy, which was considered by them to be the noblest science, or at least to the secrets of astrology and genesis, which they considered to be the greatest thing, if he had not had himself circumcised.” It was most likely his desire to purify himself, to subject the flesh to the nobler dictates of the spirit, that motivated Pythagoras, a devoted student of Egyptian wisdom, to have himself circumcised."
Circumcision in Egypt was not a universal practice. Moses himself was never circumcised, for example, although his sons were. It is also clear that the circumcision in Egypt had a direct connection with Jewish circumcision. Jewish history here becomes muddled and obfuscated. A partial understanding of what took place with the Jews and their God(s) can be found in Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism. See my post on that book here: http://culdiantrust.org/culdianforums/index.php?topic=124.0 (Freud’s speculations here are not entirely correct, but do contain essential pieces to the puzzle in this mystery. More shall be revealed at the appropriate time…)
But in order to understand the mystery of circumcision, one must look to older cultures than the Jews as well, and recognize both the physical and spiritual implications of this act, as the ancients have repeatedly assured us.
There is also a much darker reason other ancients have practiced circumcision, although that will have to be discussed another time. The above is enough to ponder for now…
My utmost admiration goes to those who can wade through this sort of thing - the Bible, the Kolbrin, and other such writings.