Ancient Greek potty training pottery device
BB reader Bill Bliss, who shared some cool photos from Ghana with us earlier this year, says...
I was in Greece recently, and in the Agora in Athens there's a museum. There's an artifact in there that I just had to take a picture of! It's a potting training seat made from clay (partially reconstructed, from the looks of it). Who knew?Larger image.
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Nice idea, wrong material. It may be nice for Afrika or for Summer, but must feel horribly cold almost anywhere or "anywhen" else.
Please, think of the baby!
if you look around the ancient agora @ athens you will find out that sanitation facilities were developed widely in the ancient city of athens. sewers and fresh water canals were all over the city centre (below the acropolis), you can easily see preserved artifacts and such facilities at the metro stations of monastiraki, syntagma and acropolis where they are kept in public view in displays.
They made stuff with material available to them at the time. Greeks made everything with clay and marble because those are the most common material in this country. Other places around the globe used wood, bamboo, and so on. I live in Greece and work at the Delphi Museum. I am around all this everyday.
I'm not sure I want to know the answer to this question, but what's the small hole in the front for?
I'm thinking that would only address one half of the potty training equation.....I see a hole in the bottom....so what happens when the poor kid doesn't need to take a dump? It looks like it would work better as a type of highchair with a precautionary drainage port and the side holes look like an easy way to pick it up and move it around with or without the kid inside. Unless this thing is bolted to the floor/sitting over an ancient Grecian sewer line, clean up isn't going to be pretty.
How do you know it's a potty training device? It could be that it's a high chair. A lot of cultures don't use diapers and so having a large hole in the seat may just be a cleaner child seat. Any body have evidence either way?
Am I the only parent here?
This potty chair is eerie in its similarity to modern ones, other than the material used. They didn't have plastic then, so I for one will not fault them for their choice of pottery.
My guess is that the hole in front would 1) let out fumes so that the top hole didn't stink as badly (which would make the child much less likely to want to use it) and 2) is probably a peep hole so the parent can see if there's anything in the bucket. I assume that one lifts up the chair to clean the bucket underneath.
It is also quite possible that it's a chair that the child would use in general, but with the added bonus that if they had to go, they didn't have to go anywhere. Very practical, really, especially in an era of no disposable diapers.
the s#!t i smell is of the bull variety and it involves this story.
Hmmm, I thought squatting was all the rage back then.
Sez you, Rollerskater. Was there anything more to it?