What does it mean to wash your hands?

(i know it means that you went to the bathroom, i mean the phrase, figuratively, the idiom)

Only the higher classes of society could read hieroglyphs. This usually included priests and government officials. The main reason for this was the fact that education was not widespread or easily accessible to the masses in Egypt. Due to the restricted nature of this knowledge, when the political and social structure of Egypt changed, the knowledge of how to decipher these symbols died out, and they were only deciphered once more in modern times.