In Mesopotamia, as in most of the ancient world, the more money you had, the more luxurious your house and lifestyle could be. This applied to the toilet as well. As early as the third millennium B.C.E., royal palaces and the homes of the elite had indoor lavatories, which consisted of a seat placed over a terracotta drainage pipe. The pipe would carry human waste out of the house through an ingenious system of drains that ran under the streets—similar to modern sewers. Lavatories such as this were never experienced by the ordinary person, who did not even have […]
