The Ancient World and Menstruation

Project Baala
6 min readFeb 8, 2024

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300,000 years ago, the first anatomically modern human set foot on land. It was roughly around the same time that the first human menstruated. Despite what popular culture would have you believe, people didn’t start being aware of periods in the last century — in fact, the first historical evidence of menstruation was recorded in the form of skeletal remains, namely those of a paleolithic woman.

The Ancient World saw menstruation differently than most cultures do today, though just as diversely. The overarching belief common in a multitude of cultures was that menstruation had something to do with the moon, by virtue of the fact that one menstrual cycle averaged 27 days, and one lunar cycle 28.5. In fact, the word ‘menstruation’ itself comes from the Ancient Greek ‘mene’, or moon. Polytheistic civilisations all over the world had a Moon Goddess who had something to do with fertility, like the Egyptian Isis, Greek Selene, Incan Mama Killa, Korean Myeongwol, and Aztec Metztli. These similarities notwithstanding, societies’ feelings about menstruation tended to vary, as did their subsequent treatment of menstruators.

Case Study 1: Ancient Egypt

At odds with the pervading perception of the ancient times, Ancient Egypt, for one, nurtured no taboo against periods, nor against contact with those who have them. There are references to ‘the place of women’ in archival papyri, but they seem to have more to do with being a place to rest. One of the earliest references to period management, softened papyrus was used to absorb their menstrual blood.

The menarche was celebrated as a girl’s coming-of-age, and she was seen as having achieved the pinnacle of her spiritual and intellectual prowess. Many rituals involved the ingestion of menstrual blood mixed with red wine to heighten spiritual power. One of the methods used to increase chances of pregnancy was rubbing menstrual blood on the thighs, and smearing the same blood on an infant was thought to protect them from evil. Menstruation was also associated with cleansing — ’hesmen’, the word used to describe the period, was also used to mean ‘purification’. Some believed that menstruators on their period were vulnerable to all kinds of dangers, demonstrated in particular by the workers of Deir el-Medina, who kept their distance from the tombs they worked in to keep the women they came in contact with safe from the dead. It was a common practice to take two or three days’ leave from work when one’s wife, daughter, or daughter-in-law was menstruating, so that one might take care of household chores in their stead. None of the myths discussed are prevalent today, but the association of leave from work and menstruation has been cited in several arguments for enabling menstrual leave.

Case Study 2: Ancient Greece

The Ancient Greeks shared the Egyptians’ views on menstruation as a time of spiritual and mental ascension, but their version of this ascension was far bleaker. Linen rags called phulakia (literally, ‘to protect against’) were used as pads, and lint wrapped around wood as tampons. The overarching understanding was that menstruating drove girls to insanity, causing them to have visions or become suicidal. Sexual intercourse was seen as a temporary cure, and pregnancy as a permanent one. As a result of this, the menarche was thought to signify when a girl should marry and begin to bear offspring, usually around fourteen years of age. The fact that girls barely into their teens were forced to marry and have children with men twice their age offers an explanation for the “visions” experienced and suicidal action taken by them. It is unclear how practices stemming from the same belief branched so far apart, but most historians attribute this to the difference in how the two cultures viewed divinity itself, with the Greek deities’ characteristic bloodlust — and lust in general — as a sharp contrast to the emphasis laid on the Egyptian gods’ erudition and protecting of man.

Some scholars, however, challenged this. Hippocrates took a leaf out of Egypt’s book and claimed that periods cleansed menstruators — as a matter of fact, he may have inadvertently started the practice of bleeding the sick dry after observing women recovering from bloating and aches after the onset of their period. Galen took this a step further to suggest that a menstruator’s health was impacted not only by menstruation itself, but also by the cultural and psychosocial perceptions thereof. This particular school of thought was scoffed at at the time, but it offers a firm basis for menstrual recognition in today’s world.

Taking a step back from everybody else’s opinions and swerving sharply into a fence, Aristotle suggested that women were simply “unfinished males” and that menstrual blood was a lesser form of semen. This theory never caught on.

Case Study: Ancient India

Not to be left out of the trend of associating menstruation with spirituality, ancient Indians went as far as to serve menstrual blood as an offering to goddesses. Menstruators themselves were treated with respect, even awe, as a result of their bleeding continuously for days and not losing consciousness. Menstruation was supposed to infuse a menstruator with a special sacred power — and in the story behind this sacred power lies the downward spiral from divinity to being banned from entering temples while on your period.

The Rig Veda relates a tale of divine sin and repentance that goes thus: the god Indra killed a demon called Vritra for denying a village drinking water, and was immediately consumed by guilt, as Vritra was a learned Brahmana of the highest of castes. In search of absolution, he approached the women of the village and asked them to take his guilt upon themselves and absolve it every month by bleeding from their vaginas. As times changed and translations slipped further and further away from their sources, menstruation went from being a favor to the gods to being seen as an eternal punishment for someone else’s sin. The idea that a woman on her period ruins everything she touches slammed away the preceding notion of her consecration, and it is this idea that remains prevalent in most rural — and several urban — Indian households to this day. Attempts to resurrect the association of menstruation with spirituality are being made, particularly in South India, where a girl, on reaching the menarche, is the center of familial festivities when celebrating her coming-of-age.

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Ancient societies’ records of menstruation vary in form and extent. Ancient Egyptians saw menstruation as a day-to-day truth of life, and myths associated with it are recorded primarily by visiting foreigners, such as Herodotus. The Egyptians themselves maintained genealogical papyri with information not only on menstruation, but also on amenorrhea and menopause. A house in Amarna was home to two model beds made of clay, parts of two female figurines, and a tablet depicting a woman wearing a cone on her head while leading a young girl before Taweret, the goddess of childbirth and fertility. Ancient Greek philosophers and scholars left no room for doubt with detailed descriptions of both periods and the beliefs associated with them, such as the aforementioned Hippocrates, Galen, and Aristotle. In India, aside from the Rig Veda, Sangam poetry and literature reference ‘ananku’, roughly translated as ‘sacred power’, that was expressed through and filled women’s bodies at menarche, during menstruation, and following childbirth.

While some features of menstruation in the ancient world are left better in the past, there are others that are employable today. Galen’s view of menstrual health as an amalgamation of physiological, psychological, and social factors would benefit countless menstruators in many parts of the world. The celebration of menstruation as divine has its faults, but it challenges the belief that menstruation is something “dirty” that must be hidden and therefore provides an opportunity to empower menstruators.

History is frequently seen as an upward graph taking all things from bad to better, but that is rarely the case. A better way to describe history would be as a patchwork quilt, layered with time and civilizations, threaded together with repetitions and colored brightly and distinctly in every aspect of itself.

About the Author

Gia is a writer who daydreams more than she writes. She is often found drinking coffee, surrounded by several copies of the same book and listening to one song on loop for two weeks in a row.

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Project Baala
Project Baala

Written by Project Baala

Project Baala is an innovative menstrual health solution provider.

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