What was the sanitation like in Ancient Egypt?
In Ancient Egypt, the Egyptians sanitation was very good. However, they did have some problems, which were challenging to solve as they had very different technology, compared to us today. No one in Ancient Egypt understood the meaning of sanitation or how important it was. They didn't know that they had to wash there hands after killing animals, going bathroom, before dealing with food, and many other things involving bacteria, dirt and germs. The cause of many deaths was unknown to doctors because they didn’t know that bacteria and germs that could be fatal to the human body.
Before bathrooms inside houses were built they had public facilities. Where you would be sitting right next to someone, with a wall or anything to separate you. In Ancient Egypt they made a vast improvement in the advance in technology, which was the building of bathrooms in houses. Some were big and some were small, this would depend on how high up you were in the hierarchy. If you were ranked higher up you would have more availability to sanitation. In the bathrooms there usually was a shallow stone tub, a person would stand in the stone tub and have a bucket of water poured over them. This was to wash the dirt off them.
In ancient Egyptian, each household had the responsibility, which was to dispose their own garbage, at the communal dump, which was the irrigation canals. This would cause the dump canals to be a breeding grounds for vermin and disease. In some homes they would have trays of earth for drainage and to dispose of waste. However, Ancient Egyptians simply dumped their waste in canals or in open fields. As water is an important part of any sanitation process, the Ancient Egyptians used the water and force of the Nile River to flush out the irrigation systems.
Groups of women would gather water for individual homes from the river or canal, while the men worked in groups doing the laundry. This was unhygienic because the canals and rivers were also used for bathing purposes.