The Stool That Connects Us There’s this one stool that’s traveled farther than most people ever will. It’s 3,400 years old. Wood, dark with age, supported by four sturdy legs, and in the middle of the seat, a clean rectangular hole. It was made in Thebes around 1425 BCE, during Egypt’s 18th Dynasty. It belonged to a man named Kha. He wasn’t a pharaoh. He was the Chief of the Workmen at Deir el-Medina, the foreman who supervised the artisans carving tombs into the Valley of the Kings. His job was to make sure the dead had everything they needed for the next life. But life brings grief. Kha’s wife, Merit, died suddenly. Devastated, Kha buried her in the tomb they were meant to share, giving her his own large, crafted coffin. When Kha eventually joined her years later, the tomb held all their daily treasures: sandals, wigs, bread, linen, and this stool. The hole wasn’t a mistake, and it wasn’t for drying paint or letting spirits pass through. The Egyptians put it there for a practical, human reason: it was a commode. Designed to sit over a ceramic vessel, it is the only intact ancient Egyptian toilet seat discovered. Kha and Merit used it in the privacy of their home. Coming home dusty from the cliffs, setting down his tools, washing up before eating. The same functional object that would later be sealed in darkness for three millennia. Fast forward to 1906. Italian archaeologists break into tomb TT8 and find it untouched. No looters. The stool is still there, with Merit’s cosmetic boxes and combs nearby. Today it lives in the Museo Egizio in Turin, behind glass. Tourists walk past golden masks to get to it, but it’s the little wooden stool with the hole that makes people pause. Because you can picture someone using it. Meanwhile, 4,000 miles and 34 centuries away, the same idea keeps showing up. A fisherman in Calabar carves a grip into his low wooden stool so he can carry bait and stool in one hand. A factory in Lagos molds a circle into a plastic stackable so 50 of them don’t suction together in the rain. A nurse wheels in a medical commode with the same center cutout, for a different kind of care. Different materials, different centuries, same human problem: how do we make sitting, moving, and living a little easier? That hole connects Kha the foreman to you, to me, to anyone who’s ever needed a handle, and anyone who has ever shared the quiet realities of being human.