The History of Contraception in Ancient Egypt

A 1994 article in The New York Times suggests that historians have long known that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans purposely limited the sizes of their populations. Women in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome married shortly after they were physically able to become pregnant,. In theory spent 20 to 30 years of their lives vulnerable to pregnancy after pregnancy. So obviously these groups of people would need ways to limit their population sizes but also limit the risk of being pregnant again and again and again. Tom: Do you want to have a bit of a guess about what they might have used as a contraception? I mean, the one that we all know works the best is abstinence.

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