Footpan

The directions for personal cleanliness must have been much needed when one considers the small stock of linen and clothes that men not rich must have had; and if we may judge from a passage in Edward the Fourth’s Liber Niger, even the King himself did not use his footpan every Saturday night, and would not have been the worse for an occasional tubbing:⁠—[…]

He was a native of Siouph, in the Saïte nome, and belonged to a house of no high distinction. Finding that this lessened his consideration with his subjects, he caused (says Herodotus) a golden footpan to be made into the image of a god, and when the Egyptians flocked to worship the image, he called them to an assembly, and, by comparing its change of condition to his own, won the respect which was due, at all events, to his cleverness.

Men and women were not so luxurious in their ideas of comfort as they are now. Bathrooms were not in existence. Footpans were in general use to bathe the feet.

During his travels in Egypt, Herodotus reported that an Egyptian king, Amasis, had owned a gold footpan used for washing his feet as well as for collecting vomit and urine.