The famous Cleopatra became a cleopatra after marrying her brother. Among the concubines of Ramses II, not only did he have his own sister, but also his three daughters.
This is because in the ancient Egyptian royal family, if the king wanted to inherit the throne, he had to intermarry with his blood relatives, and one person held half of the royal power. It should be known that intermarriage between close relatives will not only biologically seriously affect the genetic quality of offspring, but also ethically violate ethics and morality and are not accepted by the world. So, why did the ancient Egyptian royal family marry so intermarried?
Partial view of Egyptian frescoes
The marriage custom of intermarriage between close relatives of the ancient Egyptian royal family
Ancient Egypt, like China, is one of the "Four Great Ancient Civilizations", and humans appeared in the Egyptian region as early as two million years ago. 7500 years ago, the fayoum region of ancient Egypt appeared early cities, around 350 BC, Egypt officially entered the dynastic society, and formed a complete set of writing systems, political systems and political systems, including the ancient Egyptian royal marriage system that is shocking to modern people.
Portrait of the Egyptian royal family
This royal marriage system stipulated that members of the ancient Egyptian royal family must marry close relatives. It is worth noting that the scope of this "close relative" is not only the "cousins" in the ancient Chinese Qing Dynasty, but also includes fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters, and aunts and nephews. Among them, if the ancient Egyptian pharaoh wanted to have a legitimate throne, he had to marry the eldest daughter of the previous pharaoh. Usually, the wife of the next pharaoh happens to be the sister of the previous pharaoh's wife.
In short, for the ancient Egyptian royal family, "brothers and sisters" could be married, and the scope of their close relatives was indeed much larger than that of other ancient civilizations. Why, then, was the ancient Egyptian royal family so obsessed with intermarriage?
Egyptian royal frescoes
Pure blood and consolidated power
Within the ancient ruling classes, the inheritance of power was often above all interests. And the ruling class, the so-called royal family, was always made up of specific groups and groups of people. In ancient Egypt, the inheritance of power and the rule of the state were naturally held by the royal family, and the most important factor in the process of power inheritance was naturally people.
Portrait of the Egyptian royal family
Therefore, the ancient Egyptians believed that only by marrying through the marriage of close relatives of the royal family could the purity of the royal bloodline be guaranteed, so as to ensure the absolute dominance and absolute interests of the members of the royal family in ancient Egypt, and to prevent the "bloodline" of the royal family from being diluted and defiled by foreign tribes. At the same time, it also ensures that the family works together to prosper the royal family, so that the royal power is further consolidated.
Throughout the history of world civilization, it is not uncommon to choose close relatives to marry in order to maintain the purity of blood, and such examples have also appeared in the Japanese imperial family and the Korean imperial family. Even ethnic minorities on the mainland, such as the Huns, had a system of marriage that was designed to be inherited by a father or brother as a son or younger brother after the death of a father or brother.
Portrait of Shōgun
Therefore, after Wang Zhaojun went out and married his relatives, he married twice because he "went to the countryside and followed the customs", once to his father and once to his son.
Matriarchal society, concentration of power
The dynastic inheritance of ancient Egypt still has the characteristics of matriarchal social legacy, so women in ancient Egypt also have the right to inherit property. Under such circumstances, if the men of the ancient Egyptian royal family married outsiders, or let their women marry outsiders, they could disperse their family power and property to other families, giving other foreign tribes the opportunity to take advantage of it.
Cleopatra, who has a lot of power
Religious beliefs
Myths and legends and religious beliefs have dominated the idea of a nation for a certain period of time. But all affairs and systems that are related to the gods cannot be violated and must be obeyed. In ancient Egyptian mythology, Osiris, the king of Pluto, was united with his own sister, Isis, the goddess of fertility. Then, "gods" all advocate the marriage of close relatives, and the Egyptian royal family as a people naturally has no scruples about "marriage of close relatives", and even regards it as an obligation that must be fulfilled.
Portrait of the gods of ancient Egypt
Consequences of the marriage of close relatives
At that time, the scientific level of ancient Egypt was far less developed than it is now, and naturally it was not known that the marriage of close relatives would increase the probability of disease in the offspring, so even if the children born of the marriage of close relatives were deformed or dead, they who believed in the ancient gods would also think that this was destiny or accident, and they could not guess the harm of marriage between close relatives. And this, inadvertently, led to the eventual demise of ancient Egypt...
The last queen of ancient Egypt, Lek Optra VII, known as Cleopatra, was the daughter of Egyptian Kings Ptolemy XII and Cleopatra V, who, according to ancient Egyptian tradition, married and ruled with two half-brothers. But the two half-brothers, because they were the offspring of the marriage of close relatives, became incompetent and dementia, and they did not have the ability to reproduce.
Cleopatra and her men
Therefore, since Cleopatra, the Ptolemaic dynasty of ancient Egypt has completely cut off its children and grandchildren and gone to extinction. In addition to the royal family, ordinary people also regard intermarriage as a common thing, and intermarriage between close relatives in the whole country has become a common practice, which has led to the quality of descendants of the entire ancient Egypt being inferior to that of a generation, and the number of descendants is naturally inferior to that of a generation. Just as the so-called huge population base is one of the standards for the rise of great powers, the gradual decline in population means that the productivity and labor force are also less and less, and the entire country is gradually losing its vitality.
What's more, 4,200 years ago, the earth entered the Xiaoice River period, making the Nile River, which was originally fertile and oasis-filled, dry and hot, and even the grasslands became deserts with no grass. An ancient Egyptian poet wrote of the disaster:
"The whole country has become a desert, the land has suffered, the towns have suffered, the sand has been covered, and no one can survive. We don't know what else will happen. ”
A deserted Egypt
This drastic and sudden climate change has had a very serious impact on the Egyptian region, resulting in severe drought in ancient Egypt, an increasing scarcity of viable resources and land, and famine.
Therefore, in order to seize resources and land and cause more wars, a large number of ancient Egyptians either starved to death, or died in battle, coupled with the intermarriage of close relatives led to poorer and worse quality of offspring, the level of population productivity decreased, and the Egyptian royal family was also turbulent, so ancient Egypt gradually declined.
Subsequently, the Arab Empire Islamized it, and the ancient Egyptian civilization completely disappeared into the long river of history.
The fall of the Egyptian dynasty
The Japanese imperial family still retains the marriage of close relatives
It is worth noting that the Japanese imperial family still retains the bad habit of marrying close relatives. This is because female members of the Japanese imperial family will only be descendants of the imperial family after marrying a male member of the imperial family. Once married to a commoner, she would also leave the imperial family, so many female members of the royal family would choose to marry close relatives to maintain their royal status and that of their descendants.
Group photo of the modern Japanese Imperial Family
However, with the deformed development of several generations of emperors, the Japanese imperial family reacted to the harm caused by the marriage of close relatives. In order to improve the royal family genes, during the Tang Dynasty, Japan sent young imperial men to the Central Plains to marry a Central Plains imperial woman to optimize the genes of future generations.
Although in the eyes of the Japanese, their own bloodline is incomparably noble, but at this time, the Tang Dynasty was an Asian power of "all countries coming to the Dynasty", and even Japan was doing everything possible to learn from the Tang Dynasty, so they naturally regarded the Tang Dynasty imperial women as saints, believing that her bloodline was comparable to the Japanese imperial bloodline.
The Japanese Imperial Family
However, such "holy girls" are not all that can be won from generation to generation, so it was not long before the Japanese imperial family resumed the mode of marriage between close relatives. During the reign of Emperor Akihito, Emperor Akihito decided to marry a Japanese commoner woman into the imperial family in order to improve the genetics of his descendants, but this was rebuked by the Japanese imperial family, believing that it would lead to the contamination of the imperial bloodline. However, Emperor Akihito eventually overcame all odds. Married the commoner woman and gave birth to a son.
Map of the Japanese Imperial Family
However, the custom of marriage between close relatives was preserved. For example, Emperor Meiji, whose close relatives married and gave birth to 15 children, of which 6 sons died 5 prematurely, and the only surviving son, Kahito, had mental problems. Eventually, the mentally ill Emperor Kahito succeeded to the throne after Emperor Meiji's death. Even today, Japan's imperial family is still worried about the problem of heirs.