The last one to answer this was so wrong. Women were smarter than to just "sit in a hole for a week." So here's an improvement.



Ancient Egyptians used a compress of linen with a sponge on top, like a pad. They also had internal menstrual protection of rolled cotton or papyrus. Yep, that's right: tampons! If the woman had strange pains of other indications that the bleeding was unnatural, there were many herbal remedies a doctor would blend, wrap in linen, and use as a suppository. Basically, a tampon filled with herbs and honey. How nice!

The ancient Greeks invented tampons made from lint wrapped around a small piece of wood, recorded in writing by the famous Hippocrates in the 5th century B.C.





Israelite women had a really hard time. They were considered "unclean," and anything they touched or sat on was unclean.



When a woman has a discharge and the discharge form her body is blood, she will remain in a state of menstrual pollution for seven days. Anyone who touches her will be unclean. Anything that she lies on in this state will be unclean; Anyone who touches her bed must wash clothing and body. If a man goes so far as to sleep with her, he will contract her menstrual pollution and be unclean for seven days. Once she is cured of her discharge, she will allow seven days to go by; after that she will be clean. On the eighth day she will take two turtledoves or two young pigeons and bring them to the priest at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. The priest will offer one of them as a sacrifice for the sin and the other as a burnt offering." (Leviticus 15:19-30)



Seven days unclean, then another seven days had to go by after she was "cured." In a cycle that took place every 28 days, that meant she was "clean" only half the time. Because of this, the women were secluded during their period. They didn't have much, so a couple yards of linen was used to absorb the blood, which then had to be washed out by hand. This horrendous hassle is what gave menstruating women a bad reputation throughout the Dark Ages and even up until the Age of Enlightenment.







Women in the Middle Ages also made tampons. Cotton was easy to come by. They would roll these into a suppository with a string attached from the cotton "tampon" to their upper thigh, believing that if they didn't, the tampon would float up and lodge in their uterus.



Here's an herbal recipe:







Take half a drachma of triacle diatesseron, the same amounts of cockle flour and myrrh, and grind them together with bull's gall in which savin or rue has been rotted. Then cover the mixture with cotton and thereof make a suppository as large as your little finger and put it in your privy member, but first anoint it with clean honey and oil together, sprinkle powder of scammony on it, and put it in the privy member; one can do the same with lupin root, and that is much better.





Of course, this sort of weird concoction made the woman bloat badly.

Many cultures used different ways to help a women during "that time of the month," but usually the cure was the same as today: a tampon of cotton or cloth, or a dressing of linen like a pad, with herbs to take care of the pain.



They did not simply "sit in a hole."