Tracing back to human civilization 7,000 years ago, the middle and lower reaches of the Nile River in northeast Africa once gave birth to an important civilization - ancient Egypt. As the birthplace of the oldest civilization in human history, it is called the four ancient civilizations together with ancient China, ancient Babylon and ancient India.
Relying on the fertile soil formed by the alluvial plains of the Nile River, the ancient Egyptians took the lead in developing an advanced agricultural civilization, and during the period of feudal history, the development of agriculture determined the level of economic and cultural development. As a result, ancient Egypt has left a rich legacy on world cultures over the course of more than 7,000 years, including the familiar pyramids, sphinxes, mummies, and a variety of beautifully crafted gemstones.
It is hard to imagine that an ancient country with a degree of civilization no less than the Chinese civilization has a very peculiar marriage custom - blood marriage. We usually know that the bottom line of marriage is "marriage of close relatives", which means that relatives who have not yet come out of the five volts can not marry each other. The ancient Egyptian "blood marriage" is even more jaw-dropping than "close relatives marriage", which is a marriage custom in which both "brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters" can marry.
For example, the illustrious king of Egyptian history, rames II, the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, included a sister and three daughters among his princesses, which must have alarmed the government and the opposition in the Central Plains Dynasty, and it was not strange in ancient Egypt.
The reason why the ancient Egyptian royal family had such an alternative marriage custom had only one purpose, that is, to ensure the purity of the ancient Egyptian royal blood. Rames II is the longest-lived pharaoh in Egyptian history, has lived to more than 90 years old, than Kangxi Qianlong is older, longevity must represent more princesses, he reigned for 67 years, has been 8 empresses, the number of princesses in the history books can not be verified, there are hundreds of children to rely on, as for how many of them are with the Blood Prince's Room (born of his sister's daughter) can not be verified in detail, at least in Egyptian history clearly recorded, Rames II had 12 sons with legal inheritance rights who did not live to him, and there is no doubt that these 12 sons with inheritance rights must have been born to Rames II and his blood relatives.
Egyptian pharaohs like Rames II, who were so crazy and long-lived, faced very difficult problems, the most immediate problem was that the ancient Egyptian royal family had no concept of affection, let alone love, all of which were to serve the blood of the ancient Egyptian royal family, or to maintain their common husband, the pharaoh.
This constituted the patrilineal centralization peculiar to ancient Egypt, in which all women in the entire royal family were the pharaohs' tools to maintain the purity of their own blood, including father-daughter, brother-sister, mother-son, and even grandchildren intermarried. Since everyone is a member of the royal family and nobility, it is obliged to protect the inheritance of blood and prevent those who are not from her own clan and who shed the blood of other races from entering the center of royal power. Therefore, marriage became the most direct means for the ancient Egyptian royal family to block the outflow of blood genes.
Under this special concept of marriage, the ancient Egyptian royal family had no family affection to speak of, after all, unlike the Central Plains Dynasty, he had a traceable bloodline and a clear and traceable generational ethic. The ancient Egyptian royal family was different, mother and daughter could not be mother and daughter, they may become the pharaoh's concubine at the same time, and even for the future royal heir problem.
It is precisely because of this unintelligent marriage system that although Egypt's civilization originated very early and the agricultural civilization was also developed, the life expectancy of ancient Egyptians and the death rate of fetuses were very high. For example, Rames II's own sons and grandsons did not survive themselves, the daughter of Hatshepsut, the queen of the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, died unmarried, and Anksenamun did not have a son and a half daughter, either stillborn or premature. Even the surviving royal children were mostly suffering from strange diseases, and because of the uncivilized level of civilization at that time, they did not know that this was a genetic defect caused by blood marriage, but simply understood it as a so-called "curse".
In fact, in the history of Chinese civilization, there have been similar marriage customs, most of which originated in the nomadic regime regimes, such as the inheritance system of nomadic tribes such as the Xiongnu, Khitan and Jurchen. However, the inheritance marriage system of the Nomadic tribes in China was not as bad as the intermarriage of blood relatives of the ancient Egyptian royal family. It is only limited to the death of his father and brother, and the newly succeeded chief marries "widows and widows", such as Wang Zhaojun, who once married 2 generations and 3 Shan Yu of the Xiongnu, Hu Han Bai Evil Shan Yu, Fu Zhu Li Shan Yu, and Search Harmonic Ruo Shan Yu.
The reason why the Chinese nomads adopted the system of adopting the inheritance marriage system has certain similarities with ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptian royal family was to ensure the purity of blood, while the nomadic regime was to prevent the outflow of property. Because after the death of Lao Shan, the woman who was a Shan Yu had the right to share part of the property, in order to prevent the property from being taken away by the widowed mother and widowed sister-in-law, the nomadic people fortunately stipulated that the royal family adopted the inheritance marriage.
Whether it is the blood marriage in ancient Egypt or the adoption marriage of the Chinese nomads, it is the product of a specific historical period, because the ancients could not find a worse way to maintain the long-term peace and stability of the family. Later, with the continuous civilization of civilization, ancient Egypt was wiped out by the Roman Empire, and the nomadic peoples went to the road of Sinicization, and those strange marriage customs disappeared from the long river of history.