5
Good Grooming
Do not pamper your body: this will make you weak. And do not pamper yourself in your youth, or you will become weak in old age.
Late Period scribal advice
The importance attached to good grooming throughout Egyptian society should never be underestimated. Both sexes paid great attention to outward display and wealthy men as well as women delighted in sporting the latest in fashions, hairstyles and makeup. Cosmetics quickly became not a luxury but a necessity for daily life and death so that, from Predynastic times onwards, ordinary men and women chose to be buried with the carved palettes and blocks of pigment used for adorning the eyes. At the opposite end of the social scale, the elaborate fitted toilette sets placed in royal tombs give us a clear indication of the value which their owners attached to their cosmetics. As might be expected, there was a corresponding well-developed commercial interest in beauty treatments, while businesses dealing in cloth, false hair and cosmetics thrived. Cleanliness was of equal, if not even greater, importance. Herodotus, himself a Greek, clearly felt that the Egyptians had become somewhat obsessive about their bodily hygiene, in his view ‘setting cleanliness above seemliness’. To the Egyptians, living in the heat and ever-present dust of an arid climate, personal cleanliness was essential both as a means of promoting good health and, almost more importantly, as a sure indication of breeding and rank. The poor, who lacked even the most basic of sanitary facilities, and foreigners, who were believed to be dirty, were despised.
As a preliminary step towards personal hygiene fastidious men and women scrupulously removed all body hair by a constant and ruthless shaving and plucking. Hairy legs and chests were not greatly admired in either sex, and a quick review of the depilatory equipment recovered from women’s tombs, including metal tweezers, knives and razors with tiny whetstones, indicates the extent to which some women were prepared to suffer to be beautiful. Less affluent members of the community had easy access to flint razors which could be flaked to form a very sharp cutting edge and, in the absence of soap, oil was cheaply available for use as a shaving lotion. The removal of body lice and other itchy nasties together with the hair was a welcome side-effect of body baldness.
… I was put in the house of a prince. In this house were luxuries including a bathroom and mirrors. In it were riches from the treasury; garments made of royal linen… The choice perfume of the king and of his favourite courtiers was in every room… Years were removed from my body. I was shaved and my hair was combed. In this way was my squalor returned to the foreign land, my dress to the Sandfarers. I was dressed in the finest of linen, I was anointed with perfumed oil and I slept on a real bed. I had returned the sand to those who dwell in it, and the tree oil to those who grease their bodies with it.
Middle Kingdom Story of Sinuhe
Frequent bathing of the hair-free body was considered essential. Soap was unknown but natron, ashes and soda made efficient if rather harsh non-lathering detergents, while linen towels were available for drying. A few privileged members of society were able to take full advantage of en-suite limestone bathrooms equipped with servant-powered showers; an attendant poured water over the head of the bather who stood in a special stone trough with a waterproof outlet. To preserve modesty the shower-servant stood behind a screen intended to obscure his or her view of the proceedings and this screen, like the bathroom itself, was stone-lined to prevent the inadvertent dissolution of the mud-brick house structure. For the vast majority of the population, however, bathrooms were unknown, and washing took place on the banks of the Nile or in the irrigation canals. Unfortunately the River Nile, which provided almost all the villages and towns with their daily drinking, cooking and washing water, also functioned as the main sewerage and waste disposal system of Egypt. The purity of the stagnant pools along the banks of the river must have been highly questionable, and evidence from mummies indicates that water-borne diseases such as bilharzia were rife.
If washing failed, and those embarrassing personal problems persisted, the Ebers Medical Papyrus could suggest various deodorants designed to restore self-confidence and facilitate a successful social life:
To expel stinking of the body of a man or woman: ostrich-egg, shell of tortoise and gallnut from tamarisk are roasted and the body is rubbed with the mixture.
Surviving lavatories are few and far between. The most universal model, modestly housed in a small cupboard-like room next to the bathroom, was a modern-looking carved wooden seat carefully balanced on two brick pillars and set over a deep bowl of sand which could be replaced as necessary. Extra sand was stored in a box beside the toilet and it was considered polite to cover the bowl after making use of the facilities. Presumably one of the more junior members of the household was given the unsavoury task of emptying the bowl whenever necessary. Stools with a wide hole cut into the seat have been recovered from several tombs and tentatively identified as ancient Portaloos, presumably again intended for use over a bowl of sand, and we may presume that chamber pots were frequently used. Universal access to an indoor toilet is, however, a relatively modern luxury, and one which has only become regarded as necessity in the west in the past fifty years. Most Dynastic Egyptians had no access to sanitary facilities of any description and would have regarded it as no hardship to make full use of the nearby fields and desert. Curiously, one of the strange and unprovable Egyptian ‘facts’ which fascinated Herodotus was the rumour that the women urinated standing up, while the men apparently sat or squatted for this purpose.