We use soap every day for bathing, washing our hands, etc. Before soap was invented, the Romans had used oil then they would scrape it off with a metal scraper. We do know for sure when soap was, invented, but there is a story of how the Romans were sacrificing animals on a mountain called Mt Sapo, the animal fat combined with the ashes created soap. But that is probably not a true story. Ancient Egyptians had also written down on a papyrus a recipe for soap, but we are not sure if that was just used for cleaning the wool when they made clothes.
But around 200 AD, there was a man named Galen, who was a doctor for several Roman emperors. He wrote down that the best soap came from the Germans and the Gauls. In 500AD there was a soap guild in Italy, in 1200 AD England started making large quantities of soap, in 1400 AD France also began to make lots of soap near Marseille, and in 1800 AD there were soap factories.
Soap is made with Lye and animal fat or plant fat. The process for mixing them is called Saponification.
Very nice! In my book, “The Zonnehoek Story”, there is an interesting story about your great-grandparents making soap.
Is that the story where a friend of the Bochoves had hidden barrels of linseed oil in his backyard, and they made soap to sell at the drug store?