Marriage between close relatives is one of the more popular forms of marriage in ancient Egypt, and they are usually proud of it, and the closer the marriage academy, the better. For example, brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters and so on. Let's take the most familiar marriage genealogy of Pharaoh Tutankhamun of Egypt, which is about 3,000 years old.
Born around 1341 BC, Tutankhamun was the twelfth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt and the most mysterious pharaoh today. As for his marriage lineage, it is very messy. First of all, the nursing mother who raised Pharaoh Tutankhamun was his half-sister.
And this sister, along with another sister, is married to her father. That is to say, his father, the famous reformed pharaoh Amenhotep IV, married his two own daughters and bore heirs. Pharaoh Tutankhamun's father, Hotep IV, had two queens and many concubines.
Among them, the Great Queen Nafirtiti, the famous "Queen of Reformation", and Tutankhamun are not related by blood, but unfortunately the two have only six daughters. The eldest daughter was taken into the harem by the pharaoh, and the eldest daughter was Tutankhamun's nursing mother and sister.
As for the little queen Chia, the biological mother of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, she was the sister of her father, Amunhotep IV. That is to say, Pharaoh Tutankhamun is the offspring of the marriage of his brothers and sisters, and perhaps his congenital lameness is the result of genetic disorders caused by the marriage of his parents' close relatives.
But he himself did not change after he ascended the throne, and the queen he married after ascending the throne, Anhai Sennaman, was the third daughter of the Grand Queen and his half-sister. It can be said that the marriage genealogy of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun family is as chaotic as a mess of unsolvable twines.
Brothers and sisters marry, brothers and sisters marry, father-daughter marriages are all kinds of marriages that are now taboo, which they think are already accustomed to. Didn't ancient Egypt have this sense of the Weilun ethic? In fact, this is the difference in social form, in ancient Egyptian legends about gods, the blood of the sun god was injected into the royal blood of Egypt through Horus (Horus, the sun god and pharaoh patron saint).
The priests of Egypt firmly believed in this, so any non-royal bloodline that tried to dilute the "blood of the gods" of Pharaoh was not allowed. Therefore, one of the following forms of marriage in the royal family of ancient Egypt was blood marriage. At the same time, in order to ensure that more bloodlines can be born, it is not a problem for brothers and sisters or even fathers and daughters to marry mother and son.
That is to say, in the royal family of ancient Egypt, incest and intermarriage were regarded as the best way to ensure the purity of their divine blood, and it was also their prerogative to leave a divine bloodline. According to research, among the Thebes family of the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, this chaotic marriage method lasted for at least two centuries.
From this we can see that there is no sense of unethical violation of them. Because the social situation is like this, just like we in the south eat rice every day, thinking about why the north eats steamed bread every day. But although the ancient Egyptian institution of marriage was incest, they were still monogamous, and every man, including the pharaoh, could have only one legitimate wife.
Although the pharaohs would take multiple concubines because of the balance of power in the court, or in order to give birth to more offspring with divine bloodlines, for them the concubines were no different from slaves. As for the folk, ancient Egyptian women had a very high status in the family, even surpassing men. We can see this in their ancient Phutakhhotep Precepts:
"When you're rich and building a house, love your wife even more. Let her eat and dress warmly and moisturize her body with ointment. You will make her happy all your life, for she belongs to the Lord."
Egyptian women did not need to observe any so-called premarital ethics, and Egyptian women were more open than other women of the same era. Even in general, when courting, women will take the initiative more, and even more aggressive, such as:
"O handsome friend, my desire is to take charge of your possessions as your wife" – ancient Egyptian poetry
And after marriage, if the husband decides to divorce his wife because of adultery or other reasons, as long as he is the wrong party, he must pay one-third of his property and the corresponding fine to the wife to make up for his fault. Incidentally, women also have as much power as men in the inheritance system.
They even had the right to distribute property, as Simon Beauva said in The Second Sex: "Women maintained human dignity [in ancient Egypt]. Therefore, abandoning the marriage system of blood marriage, life in ancient Egypt is still very good.
This article is written by the habitual reading history of the original, thank you for your attention, take you to increase your knowledge ~