The River Nile has been the main source of water for Egypt for thousands of years, and it was the source of the water that the ancient Egyptians used to wash their clothes and clean their homes on a regular basis. According to Eman Noureddiin, a professor of the History and Civilisation of Ancient Egypt at Suez Canal University, the use of the Nile to provide water in the past was not so very different from its use today.

“Hygiene was very important to the ancient Egyptians, and modern archaeology has shown that they had sophisticated sanitary habits in more than one field,” Noureddin said. Ancient Egyptian men would shave their heads and beards, removing body hair for sanitary reasons, and the same thing was true of ancient Egyptian priests.

“Men who grew beards were regarded as barbarians, and the only situation in which men would grow their hair or beards was when they were mourning the dead,” she said. “Women and priests would also remove the hair from their bodies for much the same reason.”

“Such habits were already present at the time of the First Dynasty, as has been shown by depictions of sanitary facilities in royal tombs from as early as the Second Dynasty.” It was something that the ancient Egyptians pioneered long before other nations.

 

“The keenness of the ancient Egyptians for cleanliness is shown in many literary texts starting from the Old Kingdom, which describe people washing every day and washing their hands before and after meals. There is one text that says that a wife would wash her husband’s hands and feet after his return from work using a jug and a bowl,” Noureddin said.

In her book Cleanliness in the Daily Lives of the Ancient Egyptians, she describes the concept of cleanliness in ancient Egypt and how it is documented in ancient Egyptian literature, on the walls of temples and tombs, and even in the titles of those who worked in the field like barbers and laundry personnel.

There were many tools associated with personal and domestic cleanliness, among them hairbrushes, razors, and brooms. These were made from a range of materials, and there were also various substances that were used for cleaning and sanitation purposes. Noureddin describes how the ancient Egyptians treated sewage and how they took showers and washed their clothes. Her book contains a rare gallery of images of the tools and records associated with cleanliness in ancient Egypt.

“The famous ancient Greek historian Herodotus, a visitor to ancient Egypt, recorded many facts about life in the country, and one of things that astonished him the most was the ancient Egyptian attention to cleanliness and sanitation, notably with regard to the placement of toilets and eating areas that was the opposite of what other nations did at the time,” Noureddin said.

“Having a toilet or a bathroom inside a house was something unusual for him,” she added, though this was an ordinary thing in ancient Egypt. This situation can be contrasted to that in other parts of the world, including in Europe where toilets did not appear in most people’s homes before the 18th century. In ancient Egypt, on the other hand, even the poor had toilets in their homes.

There is an example of such an ancient Egyptian toilet in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, showing it to have a hole in the seat that resembles the shape of a key and under it a bowl of sand used to collect waste that would later be buried in the desert far from inhabited areas. “Sanitary pipes have also been found in ancient Egyptian temples and homes to drain wastewater,” Noureddin said.

She adds that the ancient Egyptians also made and used razors for shaving from the early dynasties onwards. These were made of either copper or bronze, with the handles being made of wood. Gold razors were made for the elites. The first form of razor used during the Old Kingdom resembled a knife except with a rounder blade, and later the design was modified to look more like a curved or axe blade in the Middle and New Kingdoms.

There were other cleaning items that the ancient Egyptians used for their personal hygiene such as jugs and bowls for washing hands and feet, while combs, present in Egypt since Prehistoric times, were used for hair styling and removing lice. Ancient Egyptian combs were made from bone, wood, or ivory, and they had two sides: one with wide teeth for hair styling and the other side with narrow teeth for catching lice.

The ancient Egyptians also washed in running water unlike the bathtubs that the ancient Greeks and Romans used. They would pour cold or warm water on themselves, often with the help of a servant standing behind a waist-high wall. The water would later be drained outside the bathroom and disposed of. In some New Kingdom palaces, the bathrooms had glazed tiles. 

 

 

Soap was used for personal hygiene and cleaning purposes. Natron salt, a naturally occurring mixture of sodium carbonate decahydrate (a kind of soda ash) and sodium bicarbonate (or baking soda), was used to clean clothes. The carvings on some ancient Egyptian temples show altars on which a square bar that resembles a bar of soap is placed next to a jug and bowl that were used for cleansing after offering a sacrifice. Many archaeologists think that this equipment was used for washing the hands.

“This type of soap was made from natural ingredients, not the chemicals that are used in soap nowadays. It was probably made of natron salt with a substance added to make it foam,” Noureddin said, adding that the ancient Egyptians also used to chew a substance to wash out their mouths and give them a pleasant smell.

The ancient Egyptians used clay from Assiut (red clay) and Qena (light-coloured clay) to make pottery. Copper and bronze were used to make bowls and other items from Wadi Al-Naqab and Wadi Al-Maghara in Sinai, with gold and silver being used for the utensils belonging to the elites. Pottery was made by hand with potter’s wheels being used from the First Dynasty onwards, and the methods used can be seen in paintings on tomb walls.

Over time, the pots the ancient Egyptians used developed in shape from round pots without handles in the Old Kingdom to longer ones with handles that were round at the bottom but slender at the top and resembled a modern vase. Bowls in the Old Kingdom were smaller in size than those used in the Middle Kingdom, with the latter having wider rims and a narrower base.  

“The ancient Egyptians used the kind of brooms that are still used today to sweep their homes,” Noureddin said, adding that such brooms have been found in tombs in the Tel Al-Amarna Necropolis and are also shown in depictions on tomb walls. These show people sweeping their homes while others spray water on the floor, so the dust does not spread. The brooms were made of either palm fronds or rice straw. “These types of brooms are still used in rural areas, especially in Upper Egypt,” she added.

“So keen were the ancient Egyptians on cleanliness that they even created jobs in the field,” she said, adding that “the Pyramids Texts that appeared in the Fifth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom describe aspects of cleanliness in ancient Egypt in about 2400 or 2300 BCE. There are some texts that say that there were barbers whose job was to shave men’s hair and beards, and there are others that include job titles that also appear in later texts that resemble the job of a barber, what we know today as the mezzayen,” she added.

There were various names given to different types of hairdresser in ancient Egypt.

“There are also illustrations of such jobs, showing that women worked in some of these fields,” Noureddin said. One Middle Kingdom coffin of a princesses named Kwit has an illustration on it showing a female hairdresser dressing the prince’s hair while she holds up a mirror. The title of “supervisor of the king’s bathrooms” appeared early on and was used for the official responsible for this in the royal palaces. “Washers” would wash clothes in the palaces, whereas in ordinary homes this job would be done by women.  

According to Noureddin, the modern Egyptians have inherited habits from their ancestors, especially in rural areas. Growing a beard is still practised by some Egyptian men today in mourning for a dead person. They may not shave their beards until 40 days have passed or until after the arbeen ceremony — a tribute to the deceased in which the family gathers around his tomb. Many modern Egyptians still visit tombs during feasts and religious festivals like their ancestors did.

“The ancient Egyptians painted their homes white and constantly cleaned them and burned incense in them. This practice is still done in many modern Egyptian homes today, whether Muslim or Christian, and is an Egyptian habit that has nothing to do with religion,” Noureddin said. “The ancient Egyptian emphasis on cleanliness was a sign of the civilisation at the time.”

* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 July, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly