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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jim Stinehart: [QB] Djehuti: 1. You wrote: “With such [African] customs in placed, it would not be surprising if inheritance to the throne [of Egypt] also did not necessarily depend on the father or king but to the royal wife (queen).” In the 18th Dynasty, a non-royal man, especially if he was a needed military hero, could become pharaoh by marrying into the royal family. But he usually married the pharaoh’s daughter. He did not marry the pharaoh’s wife, but he could, like Aye, marry the pharaoh’s widow. 2. Your source says: “The "heiress" theory was developed partially to explain the phenomenon, noted by Diodorus of Sicily, of brother-sister marriages in Egyptian royal family. This is a sensitive issue because it seems to imply an incestuous relationship. Some scholars believe that this was indeed the case and that royal marriages between brothers and sisters were consummated and children born. Others, however, have argued that the "marriage" was ceremonial and that there is no evidence of sexual relations between the queen and the pharaoh.” Yes, Egyptologists tend to be very gentlemanly, without paying attention to the facts. Modern Egyptologists do not think father-daughter unions are appropriate, so they often opine that many, and perhaps all, of the times that a pharaoh married his own daughter, those marriages were simply “ceremonial”. It does not matter to Egyptologists how many children result from those “ceremonial” marriages, even if there is no other father in sight. Moses does not see father-daughter unions as being prohibited incest in Leviticus, and father-daughter unions were fairly common in the ancient world. When the female involved was of prime child-bearing age, and especially if children resulted, then to take the gentlemanly view that the marriage was merely “ceremonial” is silly. True, Moses in Leviticus does prohibit a man from marrying either his full-sister or his half-sister. But since when do Egyptian pharaohs have to follow Mosaic law? The concept of “incest” is culture-specific, not universal. The one and only relationship universally considered incestuous is mother-son. Nothing else. 3. Your source says: “Certainly part of the problem from our standpoint is a proper understanding of what constituted "marriage" in Ancient Egypt and what was meant by the term "wife", or "husband." In surviving formal documents and texts there is no mention of any religious or legal ceremony by which a man's relationship with a woman was formalised in marriage in the modern sense of cohabitation and sexual relations. In fact, "to marry" seems to have meant little more than "to enter a household."” Egyptians loved children. The primary reason for marriage in ancient Egypt was precisely in the context of bearing children. It was a horrible thing in the ancient world for a woman to be barren. In the ancient world, a woman desperately wanted to bear healthy sons, who would take care of her in her old age, after her husband was too old to work or had died. Even the wife of a pharaoh had similar feelings. She might likely outlive her husband. In that case, it would be of crucial importance for her to have healthy sons, to make sure she would be taken care of in her old age. Every woman in ancient Egypt wanted to bear a healthy son. It does not make sense to talk about Egyptian women who were marrying a man but who had no intention of trying to get pregnant by that man. That’s a very modern concept, unknown in the world (for a nubile woman) prior to a 100 years ago or so. 4. Your source says: “Records show that pharaohs had several "wives" of different standing within the royal bloodline. It would appear to be also the case that an heiress-queen could both be "married" to the pharaoh and also be married and have children with another man, a consort-king. The children of the pharaoh and his wives, and the children of heiress-queen and her consort-king, would all refer to the pharaoh as "father" and the heiress-queen as "mother." Evidence of this is the way that the pharaoh is always the "son" of his predecessor, even though there may be no physical link....” I have never heard of such a thing. A woman would be married to the pharaoh. But that woman would not try to get pregnant by the pharaoh, but rather would openly try to get pregnant by another man? Can you cite us an example of that? I have never heard of such a thing in Egypt, either in the royal household, or among nobles or commoners. The nearest case we have to that, of which I have knowledge, is Meritaten. Meritaten was first married to her father, Akhenaten, the pharaoh. But then Akhenaten dissolved that marriage and had Meritaten marry Smenkhkare. But Smenkhkare himself was a pharaoh at that point, being Akhenaten’s junior co-regent. Meritaten never tried to get pregnant by any man who was not currently a pharaoh. If you could site us which pharaoh or which pharaoh’s wife might exemplify such an unusual marriage arrangement, please do, and we’ll take a look at the specifics. I know of no such thing in the 18th Dynasty. To the best of my knowledge, every woman who ever married a pharaoh always hoped and prayed that pharaoh would sire at least one son, and hopefully many sons, by her. Ideally, one of those sons would become the next pharaoh. But even if that was highly unlikely for a lowly harem wife, nevertheless it was critical in the ancient world for a woman to have a son. Today things are different. But in the ancient world, the #1 goal of women was to bear sons. That was a matter of life and death to women in the ancient world. Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, Rachel and Tamar were all desperate to bear sons. I see Egyptian women as feeling that same desperate imperative. An Egyptian female who was age 15 and not yet pregnant was very worried that she would end up being a barren old maid, which was not a nice status to be in the ancient world. Modern Westerners don’t think like that, but that’s the way it was in the ancient world. Jim Stinehart [/QB][/QUOTE]
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