Soap has been used for thousands of years and like with many other inventions that are older of the written history it is difficult to to trace accurately the history of bar soap. However we have accounts that pin down the origin of a type of soap in ancient Mesopotamia, which is known as present-day Iraq, where archaeological findings date a soap substance back to over 3000 years before Christ. In the area archeologists uncovered clay jars containing a greasy substance similar to solid soap along with a tablet describing a recipe for soap made from water, alkaline plants and oil, a principle - that of mixing a basic substance in water with fats which produces a reaction called saponification - which is still used today in modern soap, although the quality and quantity of each ingredients is obviously a bit different from this ancient time of soap.
The knowledge and properties of soap expanded to the Babylonians and Egyptians, who devised new soap recipes made from ash, which is alkaline and animal fat or tallow, the latter mast have been liked but this civilization because it has good properties when added because allows the soap to be “soft” with lots of lather, though not something we at Monsop use in out formulation since it’s animal derived. However it is important to state that soap could have been used for rituals or as a medicine to cure certain types of skin conditions, rather than a daily cleaning product, this might have been true especially at the beginning when it was first discovered or introduced. We simply do not have enough information to know exactly the cleansing ritual of the general populations at that time.
The Romans knew about this substance similar to soap, as noted by Pliny the Elder in his 1st century work Naturalis Historia (Natural History). He described a recipe using ash and tallow once again - typically derived from beef fat – that the Gauls, particularly the men, applied to their hair. However, he looked down on its excessive use by Gauls. Not even the Greeks and Romans, who pioneered running water and public baths, used soap to clean their bodies. Instead, men and women immersed themselves in water baths and then smeared their bodies with scented olive oils and then they used a metal scraper to remove any remaining oil.
It was the Arabs at the peak of their civilisation who truly advanced soap production. They regularly made solid soap, by heating olive oil and laurel oils, and combining them with alkaline soda found in certain plant ashes. This gave their soaps - produced in Aleppo, Syria, an important place and a milestone of the old silk road, where olive and laurel thrived - a fine, fragrant quality that spread throughout the Arab world after 800 AD.
As Arab empires expanded into Europe, these soaps reached Sicily, Spain and beyond. The first European soap factories emerged in 12th century Castile and Italy, directly inspired by Aleppo soap. While small-scale, these marked soap’s establishment in Europe.
Major developments came in the 18th-19th centuries. French chemist Nicolas Leblanc discovered a sodium carbonate production method in 1790, crucial for industrial-scale soapmaking. Belgian chemist Ernest Solvay later patented a cleaner sodium carbonate process in 1861, enabling soap manufacture on a massive new scale.
It was only in 1865 that The first patent for liquid soap was issued to William Shepphard, his patent was listed as “Improved Liquid Soap”.
Today, soap results from reacting oils/fats with sodium hydroxide in excess and after the saponification process it is technically a salt, all the oils that were added in the process all become sodiums. The soap separates, is purified, moulded, cut and matured for a certain period of time, depending on which process it is used.
Artisanal productions, like the one we use here at monsop, continue the traditions of our ancestors that pioneered the “cold process” method which was first introduced as early as 1600. The cold process method requires a longer maturation time which improves the overall soap quality. Whilst some of the soaps today are mass produced using man-made chemicals and artificial scents that decrease the maturation time but also reduce any skin benefits.
The history of soap reveals humanity's evolving relationship with hygiene, chemistry, ingenuity and sustainable living over thousands of years. It has been an endlessly fascinating voyage of progress - one with further chapters still to be written.