Personal Hygiene in Ancient Egypt

The most important element of personal hygiene was always cleanliness, achieved by frequent washing or  bathing. Priests had to wash daily, or more often, to remain ritually  pure. Upper-class houses of the New Kingdom were equipped with  bathrooms, usually consisting of a room or alcove equipped with a  stone slab on which people might kneel or stand while water was  poured over them from above.

Soap, as it is known today, did not exist. Modern soap is made of  fat and lye obtained by pouring water over hardwood ash. Given the  lack of hardwood trees in Egypt and surrounding countries, ancient  inhabitants  of the Nile Valley had to  find  other  cleansers.  Thus,  instead  of  soap,  ancient  Egyptians  compounded  "body  scrubs"  of  salt,  natron,  and  honey  to  cleanse  the  body.  Recipes  for  these  cleansers are found in medical papyri. One such cleanser, from the  back  of  the  Edwin  Smith  Medical  Papyrus,  also  includes  calcite  (Egyptian alabaster)  granules.  In  the  burial  effects  of  the  minor  wives  of King Tuthmosis III (1504-1450),  pots  of  "cleansing  cream,"  consisting  of  vegetable  oils  or  animal  fat  and  lime  (CaO),  were  found.  Natron could also be used alone as a cleanser. (Although natron was used in  mummification,  its  use  as  a  skin  cleanser  is  not  as  unlikely  as  it  might seem: some modern bath cubes consist of talc, scent, calcium  carbonate,  and  calcium  bicarbonate,  the  latter  two  being  the  chief  components of natron.) After cleansing, the skin would need to be  moisturized with unguents and scented oils to keep it from drying  out in Egypt's arid climate.

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