Salome dances for Herod Antipas in a painting by Benozzo Gozzoli
That of celebrating the birthday is a very ancient tradition lost in the mists of time.
In the Bible there are two such festivals, one in honor of the pharaoh, the other of Herod Antipas.
It is in the latter that the famous sensual dance of Salomè takes place, at the end of which the perfidious woman, at the encouragement of her mother Herodias, she asks her uncle - stepfather, who had promised her whatever she wanted as a gift, the head of the preacher John the Baptist , already a prisoner of the king of Judea for some time.
A birthday that was famous for its grim and unfair ending.