Re: The Nose Piercing
My mom had an answer for this. I wish I could find documentation to support it.
I was told that nose piercings were used to identify slave girls and associated them with their masters. So the more elaborate the nose-ring the wealthier the master sort of thing.
Those women that became educated and were considered “intellectuals” would never desecrate their bodies in this manner…hence the suggestion that the practice was common amongst the illiterates.
Apparently one of the wives of the pharoahs of Egypt took a girl that her husband had shown liking for and had her ears and nose pierced multiple times in order to make her “unappealing and ugly”.