Where does the handshake come from?

No one can name the moment or place the handshake began. The oldest known picture of one comes from Mesopotamia in the ninth century BCE, and the gesture then appears in ancient Greece and Rome. Its use as an ordinary greeting is much newer, and is often linked to 17th-century Quakers. [1] [2]

A limestone relief found at Nimrud in modern Iraq shows King Shalmaneser III of Assyria shaking hands with the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi I. It is read as a sign of renewed treaty relations and an alliance. Archaeologists who found it described a gesture of greeting between equals, like the modern handshake. Relations between the two powers stayed difficult, even though the image presents peace. [2] [3] [4]

Homer describes men grasping hands in the Iliad and Odyssey, mostly in connection with pledges and trust. Greek art used the handshake motif, called dexiosis, on vases, reliefs and gravestones. On graves it could mean a farewell, a reunion in the afterlife, or a lasting bond between the dead and the living. One art historian cited by JSTOR Daily dates the earliest surviving examples on figured gravestones to probably the 420s BCE. [5] [3] [4]

In Rome, clasped hands appeared on coins as a symbol of alliance or friendship. The right hand was associated with Fides, the divine force of trust and good faith, so a clasp was treated as a sacred bond. [1] [2]

The most popular explanation is that an empty, outstretched right hand showed a person was unarmed. A variant says the up-and-down motion was meant to shake hidden knives out of a sleeve. The Conversation notes that this is often said but difficult to prove, and that the sleeve idea somewhat undercuts the display of trust. The Smithsonian's folklorists accept the weapons reading for Greek contexts, where handshakes conveyed peaceful intentions among armed men. [2] [5] [1]

A second explanation treats the handshake as a symbol of good faith when swearing an oath or making a promise. The historian Walter Burkert, quoted by History.com, described an agreement as made effective by the ritual gesture of open, weaponless hands grasping each other. The two explanations overlap, and the sources do not say which, if either, came first. [1]

Using the handshake for ordinary greetings is more recent. Some historians credit Quakers of the 17th and 18th centuries, who rejected bowing, curtsying and hat-doffing as signs of rank and offered a handshake to everyone regardless of station. By the 1800s, etiquette manuals gave instructions on how to do it properly. The Smithsonian folklorists add that such gestures have waxed and waned across cultures, and they doubt the handshake is as deeply rooted as some claim. [1] [6] [4] [5]