The choice of a mate.

  • Anthony Ludovici
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details
    104/546 page 74
    on earth was qualified to share her brother’s couch and throne.” 1 Thus as early as the fourth dynasty, Queen Mirisônkhou, wife of Khephren, was the daughter of Kheops, and thus the sister of her husband. 2 Kings married their sisters in the Xllth, XIHth and XVIIth dynasties, and in the glorious XVIIIth dynasty, seven of the rulers married their sisters or brothers (one ruler was a female, as we shall see) ; in the XIXth all but three did so, in the XXth every king did so, and in the XXIst consan guineous marriages were common. Now I have so constantly found, both in the lecture hall and elsewhere, that thoughtful and otherwise quite honest people are prepared solemnly to declare, for no reason whatsoever, except perhaps the customary ethico-theological prejudice against incest, that all this incestuous mating led to degeneracy in thé Pharaohs, that, at the risk of burdening these pages unduly, I feel I must offer an elaborate contradiction of this allegation. The contradiction should be quite unnecessary. Because, as I have pointed out, if you study the glories of Egypt’s thousands of years of civilization, 3 and grasp that she and probably she alone (certainly she alone according to the diffusionists) 4 was responsible for everything that we have ever known or seen as culture and civilization, how could she possibly have had as rulers a series of families who were not exceptionally wise, tasteful, and above all creative ? And how could these rulers themselves have succeeded in inspiring any but a great people ? And yet, as we have seen, both rulers and people were almost entirely incestuous. Let me, however, under the guidance of Breasted and Sir Armand Ruffer, 5 examine the monarchs of two dynasties—the XVIIIth and the Ptolemaic. The first King of what the well-known Orientalist, Reginald Stuart Poole, calls the “ glorious XVIIIth Dynasty ” 6 was 1 Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient Classique (Paris, 1895, I, p. 270). 2 Ibid. 3 Predynastic Egypt, it should be remembered, was flourishing in 4500 b.c. The introduction of the calendar, when the year of 365 days was fixed, took place in 4241 b.c. (the earliest fixed date in history !)—an indication of the degree of civilization already achieved in those early days. See. J. H. Breasted, Ph.D., A History of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1908). 4 See G. Elliot Smith’s In the Beginning (London, 1932), which gives a brief and able outline of the diffusionist’s standpoint. 1 Sir Armand Ruffer prefaces his analysis of the two dynasties in question as follows : “ In what follows we shall select for illustration only those families the physical and mental characters of the individuals of which are known.” (Op. cit., p. 148). b E.B. (nth Ed. Art. Egypt, p. 83).
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