Brother-Sister Marriage in Roman Egypt

Abstract

A Favourable Horoscope: 'If a son is born when the Sun is in the terms of Mercury, he will be successful and have great power . .. He will be brave and tall and will acquire property and moreover will be married to his own sister and will have children by her.' 1The subject of this article is marriage between full brother and sister in Roman Egypt in the first three centuries after Christ. The practice of brother-sister marriage is not known to have been common among ordinary people in any other human society. The Egyptian practice therefore challenges several well-established theories about a universal incest taboo.The evidence for brother-sister marriages in Egypt comes primarily from household census returns. Every fourteen years, between AD 19-20 and 257-8, the Roman governor of Egypt ordered district officials to carry out a household census of the whole population (kat'oikian apographe) to serve as a basis for taxation. 2 Under threat of penalty for incomplete reporting, heads of households listed each member of the household, their names, parentage, age, and relationship within the family. An illustrative complete return is set out on page 306. Some 270 of these ancient census returns have been preserved, written in Greek, which was the official language of the Roman administration in Egypt.Brother-sister marriage in Roman Egypt is interesting because it violates our own norms; it violates the incest taboo. It is worth stressing that we are dealing here not with occasional premarital sex between siblings, abnormal This is a revised version of my inaugural lecture at Brunei University; I am very grateful to my colleagues at Brunei for comments; and to Dr.

Tylor vs. Westermarck: Explaining the Incest Taboo

“…These documents are of several kinds: personal letters, marriage contracts, other types of contracts, petitions and documents addressed to the administrative authorities, and census documents carrying genealogical information. Unlike some of the earlier types of evidence which may be subject to differing interpretations, these documents of a technical character have an "indisputable precision" (also see Hopkins, 1980). The instances of incestuous marriages were not rare but common and culturally condoned.…”

“…[W]hat is important for our present argument is that brother-sister marriages were obviously fertile, not formal, and were declared openly, not only in family matters but also in business [records]; for example, the sale of a crop… in a lawsuit… in a petition to an official… the participators made it clear that a husband was also a brother and that a wife was also a sister… I come to the tentative conclusion that Egyptian brothers and sisters married each other because they themselves wanted to (Hopkins, 1980).…”

Incest in Ancient Egypt

“…"Египатски подаци, не само што до-воде у питање наводну универзалност ових правила, већ такође бацају сумњу на основна објашњења и теорије које се нуде за типично људско понашање." (Shaw 1992: 269) Од свих студија које су се бавиле проблемом инцеста у Египту, најте-мељнија и најдетаљнија је студија Кејта Хопкинса (Hopkins 1980) која говори о браку између (рођених) браћа и сестара у Римском Египту у прва три века нове ере и закључује да се не зна ни за једно друго друштво у којем је међу обичним људима био дозвољен брак између брата и сестре.…”

“…Као изворе одабрали смо први социолошки рад о овој теми (Middleton 1962), кас-није допуне од стране историчара Хопкинса (Hopkins 1980) и Шоа (Shaw 1992), антрополога Аренса (Arens 1986) и Паркера (Parker 1996) и један извор који потиче из области сексолошке литературе, који је хронолошки најста-рији (Morus 1956(Morus /1961. Дуго времена научници су сматрали да су постојали само краљевски бракови између брата и сестре.…”

“…У питању су лична писма, брачни уговори, разни документи са генеаолошким информацијама, итд. (види Hopkins 1980). Несугласице постоје око доказа за подсахарску Африку, јер их Аренс (Arens 1986) сматра неубедљивим, а за друштва у којима се дефинитивно упражњавао инцест сматра Египат, Тајланд, Хаваје и Перу.…”