Sunday, November 20, 2016

Moss on ancient bathrooms

CANDIDA MOSS: The Dirty Secret About Ancient Bathrooms. Excavations at the most famous racing stadium in the ancient world have been completed, and one of the best preserved parts turns out to be the toilets—adding to a rich history of the disposal of human waste (The Daily Beast). This essay has a lot of information — some might say too much (but we're historians, right?) — about toilet practices in the ancient Roman world. And it includes a detail about toilet practice in the Temple according to the Mishnah.

Some relevant past PaleoJudaica posts on evidence for ancient latrines are collected here (and perhaps cf. here).