Oldest profession

The oldest profession in the world (or the world's oldest profession) is a phrase that, unless another meaning is specified, refers to prostitution. However, it did not start to acquire that meaning until 1889, after a Rudyard Kipling story, and it did not do so universally until after World War I. Formerly, various professions vied for the reputation of being the oldest.
The claim to be the oldest profession was made on behalf of farmers, cattle drovers, horticulturalists, barbers, engineers, landscape gardeners, the military, doctors, nurses, teachers, priests, lay preachers and even lawyers.
Perhaps the earliest recorded claim to be the world's oldest profession was made on behalf of tailors. The Song in Praise of the Merchant-Taylors, attested from 1680, which was routinely performed at pageants at the Lord Mayor's Show, London, if the current mayor happened to belong to the tailors' guild, began:
Of all the professions that ever were nam'd,
The taylor's, though slighted, is much to be fam'd':
For various invention, and antiquity,
No trade with the tayler's comparèd may be:
After pointing out that Adam and Eve made garments for themselves, and were therefore tailors, it continued:
Then judge if a tayler was not the first trade.
The oldest profession, and they are but raylers,
Who scoff and deride men that be merchant-taylers.
The Irish poet Henry Brooke (1701–1783) declared that humbugging (i.e. scamming) was the oldest profession:
Of all trades and arts in repute or possession,
Humbugging is held the most ancient profession.
The phrase had also been applied to murderers. In The Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries (1875), Charles William Heckethorn, describing the Thugs of India, said:
The hierophant, on initiating the candidate, says to him: "Thou hast chosen, my son, the most ancient profession, the most acceptable to the deity. Thou hast sworn to put to death every human being fate throws into thy hand..."