Ancient Toilets + Toilet Habits
Ancient Toilets and Toilet Habits
Health in Society
Many architects as well as interior architects today use past innovative and traditional ideas as an example of what can be taken or added for a design concept. It comes to question as to how these ideas and designs in the past came to be.
There were many methods as to how ancient people’s defecated and it was quite a health hazard within the public. Reflecting on ancient Roman culture, streets and sidewalks were simply unsanitary therefore, leading to a widespread of disease due to the open and public action of defecating. (Magness, 80)
The invention of the latrine (Figure 1) would be situated on top of a constant flowing stream of water where one’s business would be taken to a sewer away, but near where the latrine was stationed. These latrines were considered to be a luxury within the ancient peoples, making these limited to only using in Roman bath houses. It was not common to have flowing water underneath every place and home which is another reason as to why these were not used by everyone.
Figure 2| Developed Latrines
Figure 1 | Chamber Pot
Due to the lack of flowing water in places like residential homes, the innovative design of the chamber pot was in use by many people. The chamber pot (Figure 2) consisted of recycled jars or pottery pots, where the top offered as a seating area and one’s business would land within the pot or jar. These were mobile and were possible to clean for reusability. Now of course, many of the thoughts that circulated when using these chamber pots, was to empty out as soon as possible. These pots would emptied out on the street leaving sidewalks and pedestrians soaked in filthy contents that came out. Some people would not have access to these inventions leading them to defecate out in the open. This is obviously not seen very commonly today, but these Figure 2 individuals had no other option, ultimately leaving the door open for disease to spread through the streets. This was mostly seen in ancient Rome, Israel, and as well as Palestinian territories.
Figure 3 | Developed Latrines
Public Use, Improveme-nts, & Pests
It was noticed how unsanitary the chamber pots and latrines were becoming so to better improve their situation, latrines were started to be seen in more public places. Steps and platforms were added to bring the user and pedestrians near by further away from human waste. Looking at the improved latrines (Figure 3), there were still concerns as to how sewage would find it’s way out with lack of running water in many places, how close users would be next to each other while using the latrines, as well as their method of cleaning up afterwards. Contents left from previous users would be left either on or surrounding the seating area, still leaving the door open for disease. There was typically one sponge stuck on a stick for users to use as a method of cleaning themselves but even that sponge was shared and reused by every person that uses the latrines. Due to the spread of public latrines, more rats, lice, worms, and different types of parasites started
to appear, leaving the new improvements made, almost seem worse than previous conditions.
Privacy and Religious Norms
Latrines and overall ‘bathrooms’ overall, looked relatively the same for most people. Some that differed from the others, were sectors like (Figure 4,) where the latrine was more hidden. This space was designed to be less public due to religious views. Some began to have thoughts as to how ungodly and impure it was to do one’s business out in the open. This setting shows only one latrine with multiple steps leading down to an almost cave-like surrounding, making it less public and most-likely more sanitary to use. (Neis, 345)
Figure 4 | The ritual bath Locus
bibliography
Magness, Jodi. “What’S The Poop On Ancient Toilets And Toilet Habits?” Near Eastern Archaeology, vol. 75, no. 2, 2012, doi:10.5615/neareastarch.75.2.0080.
Neis, Rachel. “‘Their Backs toward the Temple, and Their Faces toward the East:’ The Temple and Toilet Practices in Rabbinic Palestine and Babylonia.” Journal for the Study of Judaism, vol. 43, no. 3, 2012, pp. 328–368., doi:10.1163/157006312×644137.
