Daughters of Isis by Joyce Tyldesley

Author:Joyce Tyldesley [Tyldesley, Joyce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Divulgación, Historia
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 1994-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

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.

Menstruation was a subject of little interest to the men who wrote our surviving Egyptian texts. We therefore have no understanding of how women perceived this important aspect of their femininity and very little idea of how they approached the practical aspects of sanitary protection. However, laundry lists recovered from Deir el-Medina include ‘bands of the behind’: sanitary towels made from a folded piece of linen fabric which were used, sent to the laundry and then re-used. We do have certain indications that either menstruating women or the menstrual blood itself were regarded as ritually unclean; similar taboos are found in many primitive societies where the mechanics and function of menstruation are not fully understood. Blood is often perceived as both frightening and dangerous, and the fact that women regularly bled for days on end must have appeared unnatural and somewhat disturbing to the male members of society who could not bleed without an obvious wound. The term ‘purification’ or ‘cleansing’ was used to describe a menstrual period just as it was used to describe the lochia following childbirth, and the Middle Kingdom Satire of the Trades deplores the lot of the unfortunate washerman who has to handle women’s garments stained with menstrual blood. Even coming into contact with a man whose female relations were bleeding could be considered undesirable, and at Deir el-Medina a labourer had a valid excuse to absent himself from work if either his wife or one of his daughters was having a period.

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One of the customs most zealously observed by the Egyptians is this, that they rear every child that is born, and circumcise the males and excise the females as is also customary among the Jews, who are also Egyptians in origin.

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