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Actually exactly what was used for washing the hands and the body in the Ancient World is a bit of a mystery, I have never seen an adequate discussion of this. In the Ancient World, at least from almost 4000 years ago, i.e. when the Epic of Gilgamesh was written, until less than 2000 years ago, by the time of Pliny the Elder, the main use of the vegetable oils, including of oils like sesame oil or olive oil, was not as food, but for body massage, preferably mixed with perfumes. Starting with the Epic of Gilgamesh, but also in many later literary works, until in the early Roman Empire, the greatest pleasures for civilized people were described as eating bread, drinking beer or wine and being anointed with vegetable oil. While it must have been pleasant to be smeared with oil, all good things come to an end. Greasy hands or greasy clothes are undesirable, so they must have had some means to wash the abundant oil from their bodies, at a time when they did not have soap. The most likely method for removing the oil from the skin is that they have used lye made from plant ashes (i.e. potassium carbonate) or from mineral natron (sodium carbonate). However, at least for a modern sensitive skin such harsh washing methods seem rather unpleasant, which seems inconsistent with the pleasure associated by the ancients with anointing. |
They scraped it off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigil