Many religious texts (the Quran, the Old Testament and I believe the Torah) mention that women should cover their hair. I was wondering whether the origin for this came from practical hygiene or convenience, or some other reason. As a woman with very long hair, I’ve recently taken to wearing it covered with a scarf if I’m doing any sort of heavy manual labour like working in the garden, and it keeps it out the way as well as keeping it cleaner. In a time when having the facilities to take regular hot baths was less available to the poor, would hygiene have been a reason why farmer’s wives and female peasants would want to cover their hair?
There is really no way to tell, but it doesn't seem likely. It's easy to believe, both because a) reenactors always explain hair covering as a function of hygiene and b) we like practical explanations for ideological concerns we don't share. I've previously written about ancient Greek (and to some extent, ancient near eastern) traditions of veiling: Is it true that women in the ancient Mediterranean often wore veiled clothing similar to the Middle East today?
In these contexts, veiling was related to respectability and free, married status, rather than work.