Egyptian customs
Herodotus, The Histories 2.35-36
About Egypt I shall have a great deal to relate because of the number of remarkable things which the country contains, and because of the fact that more monuments which beggar description are to be found there than anywhere else in the world. That is reason enough for my dwelling on it at greater length. Not only is the Egyptian climate peculiar to their country, and the Nile different in its behavior from other rivers elsewhere, but the Egyptians themselves in their manners and customs seem to have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind.For instance, women attend market and are employed in trade, while men
stay at home and do the weaving. In weaving the normal way is to work the
threads of the weft upwards, but the Egyptians work them downwards. Men
in Egypt carry loads on their heads, women on their shoulders; women pass
water standing up, men sitting down. To ease themselves they go indoors,
but eat outside in the streets, on the theory that what is unseemly but
necessary should be done in private, and what is not unseemly should be
done openly.
Dough they knead with their feet, but clay with their hands - and even
handle dung. They practice circumcision, while men of other nations (except
those who have learnt from Egypt) leave their private parts as nature made
them. Men in Egypt have two garments each, women only one. The ordinary
practice at sea is to make sheets fast to ring-bolts fitted outboard; the
Egyptians fit them inboard. In writing or calculating, instead of going,
like the Greeks, from left to right, the Egyptians go from right to left
- and obstinately maintain that theirs is the dexterous method, ours being
left-handed and awkward. They have two sorts of writing, the sacred and
the common.