Here are 10 of the strangest customs of Ancient Egypt!
10 - Beautiful women When a man passed in Egypt, he was embalmed
right away – of course, as long as he was rich and powerful enough to be even considered
mummifying.
Women, though, were a different matter.
By law, the beautiful and the powerful weren’t sent to embalmers for at least three or four
days.
This was because Egyptians didn’t trust the embalmers to ummmmm….let’s just say,
stay professional during their duties!
What!
This wasn’t just paranoia.
It was something that the Egyptians learned the hard way.
An embalmer left in charge of mummifying a royal body was caught red-handed by a coworker.
The coworker ratted him out, and the Egyptians learned from their mistakes.
So to make sure the bodies would stay intact, they were left out for a few days first before
making it to the embalmers.
Interesting, but why not just send a servant to watch over the process?
9 - Laxatives for everyone Laxatives were VEEEERY popular in Ancient
Egypt.
Most Egyptians would take laxatives three days each month just for the sake of keeping
diseases away and maintaining a slim figure.
Even Herodotus himself wrote that Egyptians loved their, let’s put it this way, detox
customs.
Ancient Egyptians used a laxative made with castor oil.
Actually, there wasn’t a problem that they couldn’t fix with laxatives.
Apparently, the idea was to get the disease out of their bodies by force and get through
the whole mess as quickly as possible.
Like we do today, ancient Egyptians had doctors for every body part of the body.
They had dentists for their teeth, optometrists for their eyes, and of course, yeah.
Their own version of proctologists.
The Egyptians were extremely proud of their, uh….emptying methods.
They even had a whole myth behind them.
They believed the God of Thoth developed their methods and passed it on to them!
8 - Paint it nothing like me
Most drawings of pharaohs show them as thin, muscular people, but that actually couldn’t
be further from the truth.
The pharaohs ordered their artists to make them look good, but the actual bodies found
tell a different story.
Most members of the Egyptian royalty were massively overweight!
The food for Royalty in Ancient Egypt was more likely to guarantee an early grave rather
than immortality.
The evidence comes from inscriptions on temple walls and from X-rays of the priests' mummified
remains.
The evidence shows signs of damaged arteries and heart disease.
Out of 16 priest mummies, whose hearts or arteries could be identified, nine suffered
from vascular calcification.
Fresh translations of hieroglyphics revealed massive meals of beef, wild fowl, bread, fruit,
vegetables, cake, wine, and beer were given up to the gods three times a day, before being
taken home and eaten by royal family members or priests.
They ate a type of bread fortified with fat, while cakes were typically made with animal
fat or oil.
One thing we do know…..the nobility loved to eat!
7 - Burial rituals Ancient Egyptians believed the burial process
to be an important part of sending people to a comfortable afterlife.
They believed that the deceased could still have such feelings of anger, or hold a grudge
for the living if not cared properly.
That’s why they had an elaborate set of burial customs that they believed were crucial
to ensure immortality and a good afterlife.
Wealthier Egyptians began to bury their loved ones in stone tombs and use mummification
as a way to preserve the bodies.
Mummification involved removing the internal organs, wrapping the body in linen, and burying
it in a stone sarcophagus or wooden coffin.
Pyramids were “reserved” for the pharaohs.
The best mummification technique took SEVENTY days and involved preserving the body in a
mixture of salts called natron.
Richer Egyptians were buried with larger quantities of luxury items, but all burials, no matter
the social status, included goods for the deceased.
Funerary texts were often included in the grave, and so were the Shabti statues that
were believed to perform manual labor for pharaohs in the afterlife.
After the burial, living relatives or servants were expected to occasionally bring food to
the tomb and recite prayers on behalf of those in the afterlife.
In return, the people in the afterlife were expected to support and help their living
family.
6 - Royal marriages The ancient Egyptian royal families were almost
always expected to marry within the family.
Sound like fun yet?
Pharaohs were not only wed to their brothers and sisters, but there were also "double-niece"
marriages, where a man married a girl whose parents were his own brother and sister.
It’s believed that the pharaohs did this because of the ancient belief that the god
Osiris married his sister Isis to keep their bloodline pure.
Of course, we all now know the importance of genetic diversity.
All this led to physical deformities, genetic disorders, and many stillbirths.
King Tut was the son of a brother-sister pairing.
King Tut was a pharaoh who came to power at the age of 9 but only ruled for 10 years before
passing at the age of 19 around 1324 BC.
DNA tests that identified King Tut's family showed that he had a number of illnesses and
disorders, including a deformed foot caused by a degenerative bone disease that forced
him to walk with a cane.
King Tut also had a cleft palate and a curved spine.
He was probably weakened by inflammation and had problems with his immune system.
The pure bloodline trend continued into King Tut's reign, as his own wife was his half-sister.
They had 2 daughters, but both of them were stillborns.
King Tut didn’t produce a live successor and he was the last of his dynasty.
5 - “Pillows”
Ancient Egyptians used pillows made from what would today be considered very unusual materials,
such as wood, ivory, or even stone.
However, it’s worth noting that these “pillows” were actually more like headrests and were
usually placed under the heads of red people.
That’s because the ancient Egyptians considered the head to hold the essence of life.
These pillows were intended to support the head and thus uphold body vigor and keep the
blood circulating.
They were also believed to keep demons away – this is why they were usually decorated
with images of gods.
Stone pillows for living people also existed and were used for a specific reason.
Sleeping on, or close to, the ground meant that all kinds of bugs, pests, and vermin
have a short trip from the ground to your face.
A rocky pillow might help keep a centipede out of your nose, or other insects from your
ears, eyes, and mouth.
But um….couldn’t a soft pillow have done the same thing?!
4 - Daily temple ritual The daily ritual in the temples revolved around
the statue of a certain god.
The creator of the first idols was thought to be the god Ptah, the creator of men.
Different temples were built for different gods and each temple housed a particular god
in the form of an enshrined statue that had gone through an “opening of the mouth”
ritual to make sure the god can “eat” the food offered to him/her.
A small army of holy men tended to the gods’ every whim with daily offerings across Egypt’s
many temples.
The priests also sang hymns and even washed and clothed the gods.
All statues of the gods were dressed in changeable clothing and adornments because of course,
you don’t wear the same clothes every day, especially if you’re a god!
Ceremonies ranged in complexity.
At Karnak, the daily procedure to venerate king-god Amun-Ra consisted of more than 60
points of focus, including the application of oils, incense, and eye paint.
There was also a yoga-like set of poses and strict guidelines for anointing the god-statue
with kisses.
Yeah I’d say these god statues had it good!
3 - Part of the crew
Did you know that builders in Ancient Egypt used to mark the buildings they’ve worked
on?
In 2011, a robot explorer revealed ancient markings inside a secret chamber at Egypt's
Great Pyramid of Giza.
The markings, which no one has noticed for 4,500 years, were captured on film using a
bendy camera small enough to fit through a hole in a stone door at the end of a narrow
tunnel.
The markings take the form of hieroglyphic symbols in red paint but there are also visible
lines in the stone carved by the builders.
A Harvard professor remarked that the markings were similar to ones found all across Egypt,
and that graffiti like that usually marked the work gang that built the room.
In some cases, markings like that give a date and sometimes they give guidelines to mark
cuttings or directional symbols about the beginning or end of a block.
These graffiti markings often show up in places that were never meant to be found, such as
the foundations exposed when archaeologists dig below floor level.
2 - Just shave it
Most people shaved their heads in ancient Egypt.
We know this from pictures and from records written by people in other countries who looked
at Egypt’s fashion choices and wondered why ancient Egyptians thought going bald was
such a good look.
Today, though, historians are pretty sure they know why.
Lice were everywhere in ancient Egypt.
Even the tombs of Egyptian rulers were infested with lice, apparently flooding out from the
remains of the bodies.
The ancient Egyptians had lice remedies, but they either didn’t work or weren’t worth
the hassle.
Most people got so fed up with the nationwide infestation that both men and women just shaved
every hair off their bodies.
Women usually wore wigs, and once it’s infested, they just threw it out.
Well…...that’s definitely an easy solution!
1 - Childbirth
In ancient Egyptian society, childbirth was considered a very magical and religious moment
of life.
I mean, just think about the number of kids not making it.
When in labor, women would squat over the so-called Abydos birth bricks.
As with other material items, birth bricks most likely were different in different households.
Richer people had better quality and more artistically designed birth bricks, as it
was believed that nicer bricks meant a better chance of having healthy kids.
As everything else in Ancient Egypt, the bricks had paintings on them, and the most interesting
piece of these bricks is the hair color used to show the human mother and assistants.
Hair color was traditionally painted as black, but these women were shown with sky-blue hair
color.
The symbolism of this blue color shows us that these women were given a divine form.
Children were considered a blessing in ancient Egypt, no matter their sex.
The Greeks, who were accustomed to leaving unwanted or weak babies exposed to the elements,
were stunned to observe that every baby born to Egyptian families were cared for and raised.
Here’s what’s next!