Sanitation and cleanliness are a major focus around the world as we continue to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic. What about the Ancient Egyptians? Where did they live, and what information did their communities provide about sanitary practices? These are the issues we will explore in this blog.

The Nile played a major role in the daily lives of the Egyptians and continues to do so in modern Egypt. This important river functioned as a means of transport and its annual inundation made agriculture flourish in its floodplains. Egyptians built their villages and communities close to the river. Their houses were made of mudbrick within the green vegetation.

Life close to the Nile

A significant amount of what we know about their living conditions comes from their tombs. Often decorated in bright and vivid colours, they frequently depict scenes of “daily life”, such as this fragment from the tomb of Nebamun (see photo below).

Daily life scenes in tombs

Using these depictions, we can imagine a vast array of wildlife roaming the landscape. Someone such as Nebamun may have gone for hunts in the marshes, though that was not without danger. The Satire on the Trades, a text from the Middle Kingdom (1,950-1,650 BC), describes several professions and their workplaces. For example, “the washerman launders at the riverbank in the vicinity of the crocodile”. The text also reveals that “when the gnats sting him [the arrow maker] and the sand fleas bite as well, then he is judged” (1).

What about physical remains?

Texts and scenes such as these reveal much about the lives of the Egyptians, but what about physical remains? The houses in which they lived consisted of organic materials such as mudbrick (an air-dried brick made from mud, water, and sand and mixed with straw or other binding agents). Therefore, these dwellings close to the Nile rarely survived the annual flooding.

Despite this patchwork, we have been able to study a few examples of Egyptian houses: the site of Tell el-Amarna is a rare, but wonderful case study. Located in Middle Egypt, Amarna was built during the reign of Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) in the Eighteenth Dynasty (1,550-1,295 BC). Because the town existed only for a short duration, it provides an intriguing snapshot of what life was like in this time. As a large capital city, Amarna possesses administrative and temple buildings as well as the residences of the king, officials, and the wider population.

Egyptian sanitary practices

We have a better understanding of the living conditions of the wealthy than we do of the lower classes. The same is the case here at Amarna. The wealthy lived in large houses, often with separate rooms for their servants. As for their sanitary practices, we can see another notable difference. Next to their bedroom within the private confines of their home, many houses feature bathrooms and latrines. For example, the house of the vizier Nakht (K.50.1) possesses more than 25 rooms with the private area separate from the reception hall. The bathroom and latrine, attached to the owner’s bedroom, reveal luxuries a person of lower status could only dream of.

Taking a shower

The builders placed a limestone slab in the floor of the bathroom near the mudbrick wall and also protected the wall from splashes. This was achieved by plastering the walls as several houses attest. In another wealthy house, we see exactly what this looked like (see photo above): the slab for the bath is set in the corner. A low rim surrounds the slab and the water would run off via a spout into a vessel that is in the ground (3). The user would have had a servant pour water over them.

Minding your business

Attached to the bathroom was also a latrine installation. Luckily, we do have examples of toilet seats such as this one: a limestone slab whose slot resembles a keyhole (see photo below). This is all well for those upper classes, but latrines such as these are not documented in dwellings of the lower classes. Their sanitary practices would have encompassed more temporary arrangements such as the use of a wooden toilet seat. Alternatively, they would have squatted near their home or used the fields around them or the desert.

Both the bowls catching the run-off of the bath and the latrine would have been emptied elsewhere. Were there drainage systems? Sadly, we do not have any convincing evidence for an extensive drainage system within Egyptian communities. Where we do find such systems, however, are temples, which needed piping to remove water and other liquids as part of rituals. Within the pyramid complex of Sahure, excavators found remains of copper piping underneath the floor of the temple (see below).

What about access to running water?

Having access to running water like we enjoy today wasn’t something far spread. From as early as the Old Kingdom, local administrations on behalf of the state managed this for their communities. Texts such as the stela of Mentuweser I from the Middle Kingdom highlight the building of a watering place for the community.

“I made a watering-place for (my) city.”

Mentuweser I

In similar fashion, Sarenput I speaks about the construction of a drinking place in Elephantine (5). This goes well with the presence of wells in many communities around Egypt.

Transporting water

The site of Deir el-Medineh in the south of Egypt provides snippets of what we can imagine its water supply to be. Founded in the early Eighteenth Dynasty, the village housed the workmen who constructed the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Deir el-Medineh is situated on the edge of the floodplain in the desert on the Theban West Bank. Essential goods for the day-to-day activities needed to be brought to the town.

As for water, some estimates suggest that each household would receive around 100 litres daily. We have texts written on potsherds that explain how this was achieved. They reveal a group of workmen, often of the lower classes, labelled as water-carriers. While they would use donkeys to bring the water to the village, you can imagine the toil it took on them! At Amarna, a well just east of the Main City shows a trove of potsherds. Numerous fragments of these are found scattered across a path leading to the workmen’s village further east.

Egyptian sanitary practices were manifold and varied between the social classes. Nevertheless, the limited evidence that we do have provides a compelling window into the daily lives of Egyptians.

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Notes

1. Simpson, W.K. 2003. ‘The Satire on the Trades: The Instruction of Dua-Khety’. In The Literature of Ancient Egypt. An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetry, edited by W.K. Simpson, 3rd ed., 431–37. New Haven: Yale University Press – page 433-5.
2. Peet, T. E., and C. L. Woolley. 1923. The City of Akhenaten. Part I. Excavations of 1921 and 1922 at El-’Amarneh. London: Egypt Exploration Society – plate VI, 1.
3. The vessel shown in the picture is not the vessel that would originally have stood in this place.
4. Borchardt, L. 1910. Das Grabdenkmal des Königs Sahu-Re. Vol. 1. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs – figure 113.
5. Driaux, D. 2016. ‘Water Supply of Ancient Egyptian Settlements: The Role of the State. Overview of a Relatively Equitable Scheme from the Old to New Kingdom (ca. 2543–1077 BC)’. Water History 8 (1): 43–58 – page 45.