1. A Pharaoh never let his hair be seen – he would always wear a crown or a headdress called a nemes (the striped cloth headdress made famous by Tutankhamen’s golden mask
2. In order to deter flies from landing on him, Pepi II of Egypt always kept several naked slaves nearby whose bodies were smeared with honey.
3. Both Egyptian men and women wore makeup – eyepaint was usually green (made from copper) or black (made from lead). The Egyptians believed that the makeup had healing power. Originally the makeup was used as a protection from the sun – rather than for adornment.
4. While the use of antibiotics did not begin until the 20th century, early folk medicine included the use of mouldy foods or soil for infections. In ancient Egypt, for example, infections were treated with mouldy bread.
5. Egyptian children wore no clothing at all until they were in their teens. The temperature in Egypt made it unnecessary. Adult men wore skirts while women wore dresses.
6. Rich Egyptians wore wigs while the other classes would wear their hair long or in pig tails. Until 12, Egyptian boys had their heads shaved except for one plaited lock – this was as a protection against lice and fleas.
7. It is not known who destroyed the nose of the Sphinx . There are sketches of the Sphinx without a nose in 1737, over 60 years before Napoleon reached Egypt and hundreds of years before the British and German armies of the two World Wars. The only person known to have damaged it was an Islamic cleric, Sa’im al-dahr, who was lynched in 1378 for vandalism.
8. Egyptian’s believed that the earth was flat and round (like a pancake) and that the Nile flowed through the center of it.