Similarly to today’s arrangement, wealthy Egyptians had spacious estates with comfortable houses, while the poor were shut away in ghettos. The former’s houses had high ceilings with pillars, barred windows, tiled floors, painted walls, and stair cases leading up to the flat roofs where one could overlook the estate. There would be pools and gardens, servant’s quarters, wells, granaries, stables, and a small shrine for worship.
The wealthy lived in the countryside or on the outskirts of a town. Homes were arranged around an inner courtyard or on one side of a corridor. There would be reception rooms and private quarters. The entrance was set in the wall facing the street and the windows were set high up in the walls of the upper story. They would be covered with shutters or mats to keep out heat, dust and insects.
Homes often had a bathroom with a toilet, which could be either a toilet stool with a hole in it, or a seat made of limestone. A room set aside for a bath had a slab of stone in a corner for standing on or lying on while a servant doused them with water.
Just like today, poor people lived in cramped quarters often as small as one room where an entire family lived out their lives. Here’s how the home of a typical worker or farmer looked like:
via Crystalinks, Ms Amanda