Sibling Incest in the Royal Families of Egypt, Peru, and Hawai.docx

Sibling Incest in the Royal Families of Egypt, Peru, and Hawaii
Author(s): Ray H. Bixler
Source: The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Aug.,
1982), pp. 264-281
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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The Journal of Sex Research Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 264-281
August, 1982
Sibling Incest in the Royal
Fanlilies of Egypt, Peru,
and Hawaii
RAY H. BIXLER
Abstract
Analysts of the incest taboo who believe that cultural
determinants
alone are a sufficient explanation of human incest avoidance
frequently
cite alleged sibling marriages in the royal families of Egypt,
Hawaii, and
Peru as supporting evidence. If full-sibling incest were common
in intact
families in several populous societies (where mates other than
siblings
were available) incest avoidance theories involving genetic
components,
and natural selection theory itself, would be seriously
challenged
because there would then exist successful societies which
employ a

relatively inefficient reproductive strategy. This review of
historical
sources regarding the actual practices of royal families reveals
that full-
sibling marriages were extremely rare, except during the
Ptolemaic
reign. Futhermore, succession to the throne was almost never by
an off-
spring of siblings. Brother-sister marriage was frequent among
com-
moners in Roman Egypt during the first two or three centuries
after
Christ. Because it is the only example, and because little is
known about
the marriages, this clear, but solitary, exception is an
insufficient basis
for rejecting the interactionist thesis.
For some time, social scientists have been engaged in debate
regard-
ing whether incest avoidance is a behavior determined largely
by ex-
perience and the inculcation of values or by these variables in
some
combination with genetic determinants. Early in this century
Wester-
marck 11922) contended that the sexual attraction of
conspecifics for
one another was reduced if they had associated intimately
during in-
fancy. The enrironmentalist position gained pre-eminence in
midcen-
tury, however, and Westermarck's thesis was "all but laughed
out of
court" (Schneider, 1976, p. 150).

Ray H. Bixler, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology in the
Department of Psychology at
the University of Louisville. Marjorie Bixler read and criticized
earlier drafts. Jerry
Cooney, Robert Kebrick, John Rowe, and Norman Whitten, Jr.
suggested source
materials. I also thank Margaret Biegert, Carolyn Mask, Ruth
Culpepper, and Janine
Polifka for their assistance.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Ray H. Bixler, PhD,
Department of
Psychology, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292
264
2014 11:41:13 AM
265 ROYAL FAMILY SIBLING INCEST
For many years, generalizations about the sexual and marital
strategies of the royal famllies of Egypt, the Inca empire, and
Hawaii were introduced in innumerable polemics endorsing
cultural inter- pretations of incest avoidance (Barnouw, 1971;
Hoebel, 1966; Maisch, 1973; Murdock, 1949; Schneider, 1976;
White, 1949). A number of analysts (Barnouw, 1971; Hoebel,
1966; Linton, 1936; Maisch, 1973; Ruffer, 1921) even reject the
significance of inbreeding depression. They contend that
evidence is lacking that inbreeding is deleterious or that,
although it applies in some cases, in others inbreeding is advan-
tageous because the stock is superior.1 Many commentators also

leave the impression, or explicitly state, that full-sibling royal
marriages were common (Cerny, 1954; Keesing & Keesing,
1971; Turney-High, 1968; van den Berghe & Mesher, 1980)2
I examine one form of the inbreeding avoidance hypothesis in
order to determine if it is invalidated by the royal family sexual
strategies. This theory assumes that almost every member of one
sex has the potential for attracting most members of the
opposite sex, given the proper set of circumstances. It also
assumes that natural selection operates in favor of organisms
which, in a normal environment (replete with alternative sex
partners), prefer non-nuclear family mates. A "normal"
environment also involves the offspring of a nuclear unit or
family spending the earliest period of their sexual immaturity in
intimate association with one another. This explanation of
inbreeding avoidance is based upon Westermarck's (1922)
recognition of the effect of intimate association in childhood.
If full-sibling incest in intact families were common in several
vigorous societies, (where mates other than siblings were
available) interactionist theories of incest avoidance and
natural selection theory
lMost of the offspring of incestuous unions will be "normal."
The crucial point is that a larger number of such offspring, than
of offspring of non-consanguineous parents, will be aborted,
will die in infancy and childhood, will be defective or will die
in early adulthood. As a result natural selection will clearly
favor any outbreeding mechanism that is partially determined by
genetic factors. Arguments rejecting the inbreeding depression
thesis are based upon assumptions which are not appropriate to
a widely dispersed species which lives in variable environments
and has developed outbreeding strategies (Livingstone, 1969).
2van den Berghe and Mesher (1980) developed a very
imaginative sociobiological explanation for what they assumed
was widespread full-sibling incest among royal families. I
believe the sources upon which they based this assumption are
questionable. Later, I discuss the short-comings of Ruffer

(1921), their major Egyptian source, and of Malo (1951), their
Hawaiian source.
2014 11:41:13 AM
266 RAY H. BIXLER
itself would be seriously undermined. Since inbreeding
depression is an
inevitable result of nuclear family incest, any society or
subculture
which practices sibling incest would, according to natural
selection
theory, be at a distinct disadvantage vis-a-vis cultures which
practice
outbreeding. Hence, establishing the evidence regarding royal
sibling
incest is of major significance to behavioral science theory. We
are
hampered in this task by the failure of historians to carefully
distinguish between profession, based upon religious myths, and
ac-
tual behavior. Furthermore, even post Darwinian historians have
failed to record and analyze with care the data vital to incest
theory
ABixler, Note 1) because they are seldom sensitive to natural
selection
theory, the complexities of genetic transmission, or behavioral
science
based upon the interaction of heredity and environment (Vale,
1980).

The mechanism of natural selection which operates to reduce
sexual
attraction is not some mystical or genetic means of transmitting
knowledge of consanguineous relationships to one another.
Rather, it
prevents the development of sexual attraction between human or
in-
frahuman pairs who, irrespective of genetic relationships, were
in-
timately associated with each other when either or both were
growing
up. Free-ranging baboons (Packer, 1979) and chimpanzees
Pusey,
1980) of both sexes lack interest in mating with those
conspecifics with
whom they were closely associated during immaturity. Human
beings,
related or unrelated, reared together (Wolf,1966,1970, 1980;
Shepher,
1971), quail clutchmates ABateson, 1978), praire dog siblings
and
father and daughter (Hoogland,1982) and mice littermates Hill,
1964)
are not sexually attracted to one another when alternative mates
are
available. Because human beings can develop rules and, unlike
other
animals, are able to recognize that a relationship exists between
con-
sanguineous mating and inbreeding depression we have been
able to
create rules Xtaboos) that extend to other relatives.3 It appears,
however, that for most members of our species cultural
determinants
rarely overcome the lack of sexual attraction developed in

childhood
by intimate association, even when cultural pressures are
intense. For
example, efforts to encourage kibbutzniks from the same
kevutza to
3"Reservations and speculations about the biological effects of
consanguineous mar-
riages were made long before the development of genetics and
probably before the time
of recorded history" (Morton, 1961, p. 261>. Preliterate peoples
often relate defects in
offspring to consanguineous marriages (Lindzey, 1967). This
ability to recognize a rela-
tionship between incest and inbreeding depression without any
understanding of the
genetic factors involved must have played some role in the
elaboration of taboos.
2014 11:41:13 AM
ROYAL FAMILY SIBLING INCEST 267
marry were unsuccessful (Shepher, 1971) and Taiwanese
couples
reared together from early childhood became, as adults, most
unen-
thusiastic marital partners (Wolf, 1966, 1970, 1980).
In any analysis of incest one is constantly confronted by the
confu-

sion of conjugal and sexual relationships. In general, historians
have
recorded whether a pair was married, not whether they desired
and had
intercourse with one another, but in the evaluation of incest
avoidance
theory only sexual behavior and attitudes are relevant. Another
and
particularly vexing problem derives from the practice in Egypt,
Hawaii, and Peru of addressing one's nonconsanguineous spouse
as
"sister" or "brother" and the use of terms which fail to
distinguish
siblings from cousins, affinal relatives, or even unrelated age
mates. A
similar practice still exists in the Christian church and some
social and
political groups.
The royalty of Egypt, Hawaii, and the Inca empire had much in
com-
mon. The kings ruled, not merely by divine right, but as gods
(or their
descendants).4 In each culture the ruling chief or king had many
wives
and very many children. Some of his wives were of royal blood
but he
usually had commoner wives and concubines as well as casual
mates.
Each wife probably had her own residence as was the case in
modern
Africa (Murdock, 1959). Half-siblings are not intimately
associated if
reared in separate domiciles; thus, as Westermarck (1923 Vol.
2, p.
199) points out, their sexual attraction for one another would

not be af-
fected.
One of the distressing problems is the simple fact that available
history is far from adequate. For both the Incas and the
Hawaiians, no
adequate record was available because neither society had a
written
language and thus had not recorded the events of its history.
Instead
each had passed on a "history" from mouth to mouth that
suffered ter-
ribly from both mythological thinking and the vagaries of oral
transmission.5 As will become clear, even the Egyptian record
is
scanty and plagued by conflicting accounts.
There was no division of socio-political and religious roles in
these
civilizations. Frankfort (1948) states that the kingship in the
Near
East was the very basis of civilization. "If we refer to kingship
as a
4The belief in the divinity of the king was common in western
Europe (Figgis, 1914)
and in contemporary Africa (Murdock, 1959>.
5Rowe (1946), commenting on the unreliability of the oral
history of the Incas, con-
cludes: "Mythology is only static when people no longer believe
in it" (p. 316).
2014 11:41:13 AM

268 RAY H. BIXLER
political institution, we assume a point of view which would
have been
incomprehensible to the ancients . . . The purely secular in so
far as it
could be granted to exist at all was the purely trivial" (p. 3). His
statement regarding the divinity of the pharaoh is applicable as
well to the kings of Hawaii and the Incas. "He was not mortal
but a god . . . the Pharaoh was of divine essence a god
incarnate.... His divinity was not proclaimed at a certain
moment .... His coronation was not an apotheosis but an
epiphany" (p. 5). These gods, as we shall see,
made the most of their time on earth.
The Egyptian Pharaoh
The divinity of the queen was fundamental to Egyptian
religiopolitical rule. All inheritance descended in the female
line, "no man could become king unless he were married to a
princess of the
blood royal" (Kaster, 1968, p. 117). Hohenwart-Gerlachstein
(1952)
concluded that it is above all the woman of royal blood who is
the con-
necting link between dynasties. Middleton disagrees, "The bulk
of the
evidence for Egypt suggests that kingship was not inherited
primarily
through the female line but through the male line" (1962, p.
609). Both
analyses have merit. It was the divine status of the queen which

legitimized the king's right to the throne. The male who
assumed the
throne was frequently related to his predecessor but was not a
son of the queen. He consolidated his power often by murdering
other con-
tenders and certainly by marrying a daughter of the principal
wife of the previous king or of some neighboring divine queen
(e.g., Budge, 1902, Vol. 5, pp. 19-20). Wilson (1951) points out
that the queen was "the daughter of a god, the wife of a god and
the mother of a god . . . the legitimacy for rule was conditioned
both by the royal descent of the mother and by that of the
father.... This was the reason for
brother-sister marriages by some of the pharaohs" (pp. 96-97).
Most authorities have contended that the marriage with a high
royal female was to establish succession (Middleton, 1962, p.
603), but succession was often by an offspring of the pharaoh
and a woman who was neither a high queen nor related to the
king. Middleton states, "Some
authorities maintain that there are no well established cases
among the pharaohs of the marriage of full brothers and sisters;
no more than a half-sibling relationship can be proved" (p. 604).
The problems of how to interpret data are best exemplified by
what is known and suspected regarding the 18th dynasty. Ruffer
(1921)
2014 11:41:13 AM
classifies a number of kings, who were products of
nonconsanguineous

mates, as of incestuous origin (e.g., Table VI., p. 334) and then
marvels
at the vigor, longevity, ability, and character of these offspring
of
"consanguineous" matings! Middleton (1962) contends that "the
greatest concentration of cases of marriage of sisters or half-
sisters ap-
pears to be in the 18th and l9th dynasties" (p. 604). However,
Wente
(1976), referring to the 18th dynasty, writes "an attempt had
been
made to continue the practice of having a young pharaoh marry
his
sister, a marriage that had theological implications .... In the
course
of the dynasty this practice was modified; a number of kings
who had
been born of minor wives of kings were married to the most
legitimate
royal heiress to validate their own position in the succession"
(p. 21).
Kaster (1968) seems to confirm the position of Wente in the
following
excerpt:
"Most of the evidence indicates that (a) Hatsheput was the
daughter of Thothmes
I She was married to Thothmes II ........................ who was the
son of Thothmes I. by a con-
cubine; and (b) the boy who later became Thothmes III. was the
son of Thothmes II.
by one of his concubines. This can get rather complicated" (pp.
117-118). Wilson
(1951) carried on where Kaster left off-and the complications

vanish: "Thut-mose
III. had been of inferior birth and had felt obliged to strengthen
his position by mar-
rying at least three princesses of full legitimacy. His son was
thus of full blood and
right. But the grandson, Thut-mose IV., was again the son of a
subordinate queen,
and now, with the Empire two generations under way, did not
feel the old compulsion
to strengthen his position. On the contrary, he took to wife the
daughter of Ar-
tatama, the King of Mitanni, and she became the mother of the
future Amen-Hotep
III. The latter was certainly not of the purest royal line, with
such a father and such a
mother-he was half-Mitannian. He showed no concern about the
purity of his royal
blood. He made an Egyptian commoner his Great King's Wife,
the girl Tiy, whose
parents bore no titles of any consequence" (pp. 201-202).
Actually, this pattern of succession by an offspring of a non-
consanguineous mate of the pharaoh was very common before
the 18th
dynasty. I surveyed the succession patterns in Baikie (1929),
Budge
(1902), and Weigall (1925). Usually there was no evidence
provided as
to whom the pharaoh was married and who was the mother of
his suc-
cessor but, in the vast majority of cases in which the mother
was iden-
tified, the successor was not the product of a consanguineous
mating.
Hohenwart-Gerlachstein (1952) bluntly states, "Neither in the
Old

Kingdom, nor in the Middle (or) New Kingdom has a single in-
disputable example of full-sibling marriage been cited" (p. 239).
Another illustration of the complexity of interpretation is
provided
by Akhenaten (Amentohep IV) who was married to Nafertiti.
Baikie
2014 11:41:13 AM
270 RAY H. BIXLER
(1929) contends, based upon unusual physical features as
portrayed in
paintings and sculpture, that they were siblings. Wente (1976)
points
out, however, that "certain peculiar features of Amentohep IV's
ap-
pearance . . . were accentuated in the new art, and were carried
out into
representations of his queen, the beautiful Nafertiti, their
children,
and even commoners" (p. 23). The art of this period is known as
the
Amarna style.
The Ptolemies
Regarding the Ptolemaic period Middleton (1962) states "the
evidence is conclusive that many of the kings married their
sisters or

half-sisters" (p. 608). It is important to remember that he is
discussing
marriage not sexual behavior. For example, he cites as one
illustration
the marriages of Cleopatra VI to Ptolemy XII and to Ptolemy
XIII
which, as we shall see, were almost certainly not consummated.
That
there was incest, broadly defined, among the Ptolemies,
however, can
scarcely be doubted. I found little disagreement with either the
ac-
count of Budge (1902, Vol. VII and VIII) or that of Bevan
(1968). I use
Bevan's data in Table 1. When one sought the throne, marriage
to a
sibling, aunt, or cousin was one option, but, as seems to have
been true
among monarchs the world over, murdering them and other
relatives
seems to have been the preferred means. I chose three rulers to
il-
lustrate Ptolemaic efforts to consolidate power. The first King,
Ptolemy I, was born neither of high royalty nor of incest. His
divine
status and that of his successors' was assured when quite some
time
after his ascendancy it was revealed that his mother was a
descendant
of Herakles and Bacchus! Ptolemy IV (Philopator) "brought
down
Egypt . . . to a condition of feebleness and humiliation" (Bevan,
1968,
p. 220). He and his advisors murdered his brother, his uncle,
and his
mother. Nine years after he assumed the throne he married his

sister,
Arsinoe III. He was clearly more enamored of his mistress,
Agathocleia, with whom he consorted both before and after his
mar-
riage. She claimed to have served as the prince's (Ptolemy V)
wet
nurse. Bevan (1968) describes the mistreatment of Arsinoe III
by
Philopator's advisors at some length and contends that they
arranged
the sibling marriage "in order that an heir to the throne of the
re-
quisite royal blood might be bred from her" (p. 233). I think it
much
more likely that they arranged the marriage to strengthen the
king's
position and theirs. Shortly after Philopator's death his advisors
2014 11:41:13 AM
murdered Arsinoe III.
Table 1
Ptolemaic Regime
Parents of King Wivesa of King Parents of King Wivesa of King
I. NCb NC VIII. Uncle-Niece Two Sisters
II. NC NC; Sister IX. Uncle-Niece Niece
III. NC Half-Cousin X. NC Cousin

IV. Half Cousins Sister XI. NC Sister?; NC
V. Siblings NC XI I. NC Sister
VI . NC Sister XI I I . NC Sister
VII. NC Sister; Niece
Note. Derived from Bevan, 1968.
aMost of those who reigned for some time had numerous wives.
bNC = Non-Consanguineous.
Cleopatra VI, immortalized by Shakespeare, Shaw, and
Elizabeth
Taylor, and her two brothers were the offspring of a "lady with
unknown . . . antecedents" (Budge, 1902, Vol. VIII, p. 79).
Cleopatra's
father "was not a full-blooded descendant of the Ptolemies (and)
of her
mother we know nothing, but it is probable that she had Semitic
blood
in her veins" (Budge, Vol. VIII, 1902, p. 116). Nevertheless,
Ruffer
(1921), in one of his many naive critiques of the effects of
inbreeding
states, "Certainly, the audacity, cleverness, and resources of
this
Egyptian queen, the last offspring of many incestuous
marriages, com-
pel our admiration . . ." (p. 352, emphasis added).6 This
statement was
made in spite of his awareness that Cleopatra was the offspring
of non-
6The absence of anything approaching continuity of succession
based upon full-
sibling incest has often escaped the attention of students of the
history of sexual

customs. For example, Lewinsohn (1958) writes, "the Ptolemies
(a Greek dynasty) prac-
ticed marriage between brother and sister for three hundred
years without noticeably
bad physical effects (p. 20-21}." Bullough (1976, p. 61) appears
to accept Ruffer's im-
pression that starting with Ptolemy V. the kings were the
offspring of sibling incest
and, nevertheless, suffered no significant effects.
In 1892 Galton recognized the absence of intense inbreeding
among the Ptolemies:
"(T)here are no less than nine cases of close intermarriages
distributed among the thir-
teen Ptolemys. However, . . . we shall. . . see that the main line
of descent was un-
touched by these intermarriages, except in ... two cases .... The
personal beauty and
vigour of Cleopatra, the last of the race, cannot therefore be
justly quoted in disproof of
the evil effects of close breeding. On the contrary, the result of
Ptolemaic experience
was distinctly to show that intermarriages are followed by
sterility" (pp. 198-199).
2014 11:41:13 AM
272 RAY H. BIXLER

consanguineous parents (p. 351). Her "audacity, etc." appear to
have
been a function of hybrid vigor.
Cleopatra's marriages to her brothers have been widely cited as
evidence of Ptolemaic incest. Both Budge's and Bevan's
accounts
reveal such contentions as absurd. Cleopatra was 17 or 18 years
old
when she assumed the throne with her husband-brother Ptolemy
XII
who was 9 or 10. She was driven from Alexandria when her
brother
was 12 or 13 years old. Cohabitation, if it occurred, took place
between
a boy who was probably sexually immature and a sophisticated
young
woman. Ptolemy XII disappeared after a battle against Caesar's
forces. Cleopatra married her remaining brother, Ptolemy XIII,
who
was about 11 or 12 and he died, probably by her hand, 2 years
later
because she "wished to make way for her son, Ptolemy (XIV),
who was
surnamed Caesar" (Budge, 1902, Vol. VIII., p. 87). Cleopatra
and her
brothers were, at best, estranged bedfellows!
So, there were seven or eight Ptolemies who married sisters,
one of
whom (VIII) married two sisters. At least two marriages, those
of
Cleopatra with XII and XIII were not consummated, and these
plus
the marriages of II, IV, and VII were politically arranged and
lacking

any evidence of sexual attraction between the siblings involved.
Ptolemy VII appears to have been sexually attracted to his niece
but
the hypothesis under evaluation predicts no reduction of sexual
attrac-
tion between uncle and niece. Only one Ptolemy was the
product of a
full-sibling union. For only two of the sibling marriages (VI and
VIII's
first marriage) is evidence lacking that the marriages were
purely for-
mal and devoid of sexual attraction between the partners.
Commoner Sibling Marriages
Cerny (1954) who quite uncritically accepts royal sibling
marriage in
Pharaonic Egypt ["enough evidence seems to have been adduced
to ac-
cept the custom (sibling marriage) as proven within the royal
families"
(p. 23)] nevertheless, provides the most careful data regarding
com-
moner sibling marriages in Pharaonic Egypt. Inspection of
records
from the First Intermediate Period to the Eighteenth Dynasty
leads
him to conclude, "We have no certain instance of a marriage
between
full-brother and sister. This is a disappointing result, and I am
the first
to regret it" p. 29). Of 101 marriages, he found only two in
which the
name of the mother of the husband and wife is the same. He was
unable to determine the father's name in 97 marriages so that
half-

2014 11:41:13 AM
sibling marriages, which do not challenge the hypothesis being
tested,
could have been common.
Roman Egypt is quite another matter because evidence that
com-
moner siblings frequently married during the first two centuries
A.D.
is overwhelming. A papyrus, which "contains the most
important
document yet discovered in Roman Egypt" (Johnson, 1959, p.
711)
prohibited siblingincest. Winter's (1933, p. 30) translationvaries
only
in minor details from Johnson's (1959): "Romans are not
permitted to
marry their sisters or their aunts, but marriage with their
brothers'
daughters has been conceded. Pardalas, indeed, when a brother
mar-
ried a sister, confiscated the property" (p. 712). Egyptians,
however,
were not subject to this law until 212 A.D. Both Egyptians and
Romans announced weddings that appear to have been between
full-
siblings (Hopkins, 1980; Johnson, 1959; Middleton, 1962;

Winter,
1933) and the incidence of sibling marriages until 212 A.D. is
sufficient
to seek an explanation. Because they were commoners, little is
re-
corded beyond wedding invitations, marriage contracts and a
few let-
ters which reveal almost nothing regarding sexual attraction.
Hopkins
(1980) ponders the motivation behind sibling marriages and
tentative-
ly concludes that "Egyptian brothers and sisters married each
other
because they themselves wanted to" (p. 353).
In light of the massive evidence pointing to lack of sexual
attraction
between mature littermates, clutchmates, human siblings, and
peer
kibbutzniks, one has no reason to believe that Egyptian and
Roman
siblings reared in intimate association with one another were
sexually
attracted to each other. Nevertheless, these sibling marriages do
pose
a challenge which I, like Cerny, but for diametrically opposed
motives,
regret! Full-sibling marriages for two or three hundred years in
one
culture, if indeed these marriages were between siblings who
grew up
together and found each other sexually attractive, would not, in
and of
itself, prove disastrous to the theory I am defending. If such
behavior
could be found in several vigorous cultures it would seriously

weaken
my hypothesis and threaten the theory of natural selection.
However,
"Brother-sister marriage is not known to have been common
among
ordinary people in any other human society" Hopkins, 1980, p.
303).
Hawaiian Royalty
Any historical account of the period prior to the arrival of
Westerners in 1778 is of dubious validity, not only because the
2014 11:41:13 AM
274 RAY H. BIXLER
Hawaiians had no written language, but because they were
attuned
neither to natural causes nor reliable reporting. The
missionaries who
arrived in 1820 created an alphabet and initiated formal
education.
There can be no doubt that the pre-1778 history was filtered and
elaborated over centuries and then further warped by 40 years
of
Western influence before being recorded. And, the recording
itself was
by, or under the influence of, Christian missionaries, not
historians.

The islands were not united under any one ruler until well into
the
l9th century. Wars between groups loyal to local chiefs were
apparent-
ly very common and, as had probably been true at one time
everywhere
else in the world, these chiefs were sacred or divine (Daws,
1968;
Joesting, 1972; Kuykendall & Day, 1948). The lore related to
the sex-
ual practices of the Alfi (ruling class) is presented in the works
of Malo
(1951) and Kamakau (1961). Malo was born late in the 18th
century
and sometime after the first Westerners arrived. He converted to
Christianity and became very critical of his cultural origins. He
was an
ordained minister. It is his account which van den Berghe and
Mesher
(1980) accept as evidence that full-sibling incest was common.
Kamakau, born in 1815, was educated in a seminary and became
in-
terested as a young man in his own culture.
Malo (1951) provides a list of the first 59 kings of Kauai but he
acknowledges that "nothing very definite" (p. 238) is known
about
these kings. His editor adds, with what seems to be something
of an
understatement, that the chapter is "almost wholely mythical"
(notes
on chapter 59, p. 241). Malo concludes his review of the early
chiefs
with the mythical story of Umi's youth. He was the most
outstanding
of the early chiefs. Kamakau (1961) begins his history with Umi

and
stops with the death of Kamehameha III in 1854. Thus the two
authors provide us with a continuous "history" from the original
mythical pair of Wakea and Papa to a period well after the
Westerners
had arrived and were recording their own version. Obviously,
little
faith can be placed in their accounts of Hawaii prior to the
arrival of
the missionaries.
Malo (1951) explains in great detail the role of incest in
insuring the
highest possible rank for chiefs. I quote very briefly from him.
"A
suitable partner for a chief of the highest rank was his own
sister,
begotten by the same father and mother as himself . . . and if the
union
bore fruit, the child would be a chief of the highest rank^' (p.
54).
The Hawaiian legend relates that Liloa, the father of the most
2014 11:41:13 AM
famous of Hawaiian kings, Umi, encountered and seduced a
beautiful
commoner as she was completing her post menstrual bath. Umi

was
born of this union. Liloa was already married to his aunt and by
her
had fathered a son, Hakau, whom he selected as his successor.
Hakau,
a cruel leader, was eliminated by Umi with the collaboration of
the
priests. Umi married his half-sister, a daughter of Liloa,
markedly
enhancing his rank.
Umi had already accumulated a number of wives and now
because he
was a religious chief and just "the rulers of other kingdoms
brought
their favorite daughters to him for wives. Umi had many wives
of
chiefly blood and he became an ancestor for the people. There
is not a
commoner on Hawaii who can say, 'Umi-a-Liloa was not our
ancestor' . . ." (Kamakau, 1961, p. 19). "Umi was a real and
famous
man who ruled as king of the island of Hawaii. His story was
retold
over generations and became embellished just as the tales of
King Ar-
thur. . . were embellished" (Joesting, 1972, p. 23).
The story of two brothers appears again in the kingdom of the
island
of Maui, with the younger, once again wresting the throne from
his
older and wicked brother. This younger brother had a non-
consanguineous wife, however. "(S)he was his companion in his
trials
and tribulations, even in those that might mean death. He made

a
sister of his wife" (Kamakau, 1961, p. 25). The same theme
appears
with the death of Umi, this time involving two of his sons; the
elder
and cruel king was killed and the younger became "ruler of the
whole
of Hawaii .... He had many sons and daughters because he had
many
wives .... He took his nieces and the daughters of his cousins to
be his
wives. . ., and from his many wives were born sons and
daughters.
They became the ancestors of chiefs and commoners"
(Kamakau,
1961,p. 36andp. 45).
In Kamakau's narrative, intrigue is piled upon intrigue. Chiefs,
often have among their many wives a half-sister. At no point,
however,
is there mention of a marriage to a full-sister.
Shortly after the arrival of the first Westerners, Kamehameha I
rose
to power. He was a favorite of the chief, Kalaniopuu.
Kalaniopuu died
in 1782 and by the summer of the same year Kamehameha had
man-
aged to dispose of Kalaniopuu's son and successor. Joesting
(1972)
notes that Kamehameha's paternity is not known but that he was
a
high ranking chief; Kuykendall (1968, Vol. I., p.30) refers to
him as the
king's nephew. I have not been able to determine how many
wives

2014 11:41:13 AM
276 RAY H. BIXLER
Kamehameha I had, but there were several, and, apparently,
none was
a close relative of his. His favorite wife was Kaahumanu who
bore him
no children.
History was now being recorded and is probably reliable,
especially
as it relates to the number of wives each chief had and the
degree to
which they were related. Nevertheless, terminology may pose a
prob-
lem. Handy and Pukui (1972) point out that "(i)n the context of
family
relationships the words for son and daughter will be applied to
nephews and nieces throughout the range of blood, adoptive,
fostering
and in-law connections" (p. 66).
Kamehameha I was succeeded by Liholiho (Kamehameha II),
one of
his sons. Liholiho had five wives, the favorite being Kamamalu,
his
half-sister. Christianity made very rapid strides during his
reign, and,
although he expressed support for the religion, he did not go so

far as
to divest himself of his multiple wives.
Liholiho was succeeded by Kamehameha III (Kaukieaoulii), his
brother. Kamehameha III did not marry but he deeply loved his
half-
sister, Nahienaena, and although the protest of the missionaries
prevented him from marrying her he did have a child by her.
From this
point on, multiple wives and incestuous unions were rather
effectively
proscribed by the awesome power of the Christian church.
The mother of Kamehameha II and III, Keopuolani, was herself
the
child of a royal chief from the island of Hawaii and a royal
chiefess
from the island of Maui, obviously neither an issue of incest nor
a close
relative of her husband. She was '4formally united" with
Kamehameha
I but was not his favorite companion. '(H)e slept with her only
from
time to time in order to perpetuate the high-chiefly blood of the
kingdom" Kamakau, 1961, p. 260).
Hawaiian mating strategies do not conflict with the predictions
based upon inbreeding avoidance theory. In spite of the fact that
the
religio-political Hawaiian system supported the importance of
full-
sibling marriage to achieve the highest ranking offspring, there
were,
after the original pair of Wakea and Papa, no full-sibling
marriages or
sexual activity reported in lore or fact.

Incas
Metraux (1969) finds strong agreement among chroniclers
regarding
the names of the emperors and the order of their succession,
but, he
warns, such precision unfortunately does not justify a belief in
the ac-
2014 11:41:13 AM
curacy of the accounts. Some events were "told in almost the
same
manner about two separate reigns.... Few historians treat as
entirely
historical any accounts of reigns before that of Pachacuti (1438-
1471>"
(p. 42). Rowe (1946) points out that the only eyewitness
accounts are
by soldiers who accompanied Pizzarro. Spanish translations of
Indian
reports provide what is known of most aspects of the culture
and Rowe
believes their veracity is difficult to judge. "In addition, 16th-
and
17th-Century writers copied liberally from one another, often
without
giving credit, so that many... 'sources' and 'documents' are only

third- or fourth-hand restatements of the original testimony,
marred
by carelessness and by personal or political prejudice" (p. 193-
194). He
believes, however, that "we are probably safe in accepting the
tradi-
tional list of rulers as accurate" (p. 202).
As was the case with Egyptians and Hawaiians, kinship and
con-
jugal terminology failed to draw the clear cut distinctions
desired in an
analysis of incest, e.g., first cousins, were called "brother" and
"sister," the father's brother was called "father" and the mother's
sister, "mother." Conjugal terminology was very complex.
Although
all cousins called each other brother and sister, marriage
between them
was sanctioned if the female cousin were to become the
principal wife.
Full-siblings were prohibited from marrying, but nobles could
marry
their half-sisters. (Rowe, 1946, pp. 249-252).
"The Inca Emperors were absolute rulers .... They not only ruled
by divine right, but claimed lineal descent from the Sun Xa
major god)
and were worshipped as divine during their life times" (Rowe,
1946, p.
257). In their myth of origin, four brothers and their four sisters
emerged from a cave. Three of the brothers were eliminated
leaving on-
ly Ayar Manco (Monco Capac), the first emperor, and his four
sisters
to establish the Inca lineage. "Each emperor kept a large harem
of

secondary wives in addition to his principal wife QOYA), who
was in
earlier times the daughter of some neighboring ruler..." (Rowe,
1946, p. 257).
Cobo, who, according to Rowe, provides "the best and most
com-
plete description of Inca culture...," tells the history of the in-
cestuous tenth and eleventh emperors, Tupa Inca and Guayna
Capac.
"This king Tupa Inca) broke the inviolable custom that existed
among the Incas, strengthened by a general and very ancient
prohibi-
tion of marriage within the closest degree of blood relationship.
In
spite of the aforesaid custom and prohibition that had lasted
without
2014 11:41:13 AM
278 RAY H. BIXLER
being questioned up to his time, he took as his wife Mama
Ocllo, his sister on both the paternal and maternal sides ....
Tupa Inca made a law to the effect that only the kings could
marry their full sisters by the father and the mother, as he did"
(Cobo, 1979, p. 142).
Among the women of this Inca there was one . . . of great
beauty, whom the Inca loved and favored more than his
legitimate wife; and he had by her a son whom he loved as
much as the boy's mother (Cobo, 1979, p. 148).

Rostworowski (1960) believes that "neither primogeniture nor
the European notions of bastardy prevailed in the Inca state" (p.
419). She states that the son who overcame his brothers "with
weapons or by attracting greater support" p. 419) won the
kingship. "Eventually, and still in an effort to eliminate
succession squabbles and civil wars, at the peak of the empire's
glory, Tupa Yupanqui introduced royal incest as a way of
legitimizing succession by the coya's son" (p. 426).
Quayna Capac, the eleventh emperor, "was married to his own
sister, called Mama Cusirimay .... He had only one son by his
sister; this son, named Ninan Cuyuchi, died before his father.
He had numerous sons by his other wives; the two most
important were Huascar, on the one hand, . . . and Atauhualpa,
on the other" (Cobo, 1979, p. 161). These sons were the last
emperors. They fought each other for control of the empire and,
with the help of Pizzarro, destroyed it in the process.
Cobo 1956, p. 99) states that Huascar married his sister, uniden-
tified as to degree of consanguinity (hermana suya).7 John
Rowe (Note 2) points out, "The record we have. . . is one of
three generations of
brother-sister marriage in the Inca royal family before the
arrival of the Spanish and of attempts to continue the practice
thereafter." As in the case of the Ptolemies, however, only one
Inca, Guayna Capac, was an offspring of full- or half-siblings.
Thus all of those many references to Inca incest boil down to
the myth of origin and the marriage of but three emperors to
their sisters. The first of these preferred another wife, the
second had by his sister but one son, who did not survive and
Huascar was succeeded by a half- brother.
Conclusion
The available data from these three cultures provide no
challenge to (or support for) a natural selection theory of incest
avoidance which

7John Rowe called my attention to this marriage and provided
other assistance. He is not, in any way, responsible for my
conclusions, however.
2014 11:41:13 AM
279 ROYAL FAMILY SIBLING INCEST
assumes that a genetic mechanism markedly reduces the sexual
at-
traction between conspecifics who were intimately associated
with one
another during infancy and early childhood. Natural selection
appears
to have resulted in the development of mechanisms which
reduce the
sexual attraction of consanguineous nuclear family members for
one
another. Apparently no dispensation was granted to resident
gods.
References Notes
1. Bixler, R. A note on the multiple meanings of incest.
Unpublished manuscript.
2. Rowe, J. Personal communication.
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http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspArticle
Contentsp. 264p. 265p. 266p. 267p. 268p. 269p. 270p. 271p.
272p. 273p. 274p. 275p. 276p. 277p. 278p. 279p. 280p.
281Issue Table of ContentsThe Journal of Sex Research, Vol.
18, No. 3 (Aug., 1982), pp. 193-288Front MatterThe Treatment
of Sexual Paraphilias: A Review of the Outcome Research [pp.
193-252]Sexual Therapy for a Woman with Cerebral Palsy: A
Case Analysis [pp. 253-263]Sibling Incest in the Royal Families
of Egypt, Peru, and Hawaii [pp. 264-281]Reviews and
AbstractsReview: untitled [pp. 282-285]Review: untitled [pp.
285-286]Back Matter [pp. 287-288]
Brother-Sister Marriage and Inheritance Strategies in Greco-
Roman Egypt
Author(s): JANE ROWLANDSON and RYOSUKE
TAKAHASHI
Source: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 99 (2009), pp. 104-

139
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Brother-Sister Marriage and Inheritance
Strategies in Greco-Roman Egypt
JANE ROWLANDSON AND RYOSUKE TAKAHASHI
I INTRODU TION
Sabine Huebner has recently brought ne impetus to the long-
standing debate on ho to
e plain the ell-documented practice of full brother-sister
marriage in Roman Egypt, a
practice hich apparently contra enes man ind s most
fundamental and uni ersal taboo
on incest bet een immediate in. These marriages ere, she argues,
actually made
bet een adopted rather than biological siblings, and thus fall
into the same pattern idely
attested in the Gree East, hereby families ithout natural heirs
adopted a son (often
from the ider circle of relati es) to marry their daughter and thus
preser e the family
line.1 Huebner has dra n attention to important and hitherto
neglected peculiarities of the
papyrological documentation from Egypt, particularly the rarity
of e plicit references to
adoption. Her suggestion that the papyri may conceal a much
ider real e tent of silent
adoptions is attracti e, and deser es fuller in estigation ithin the
specific conte t of
Roman Egypt s demographic and inheritance patterns. She also
raises further doubts
about the o erall reliability of the demographic information pro
ided in the census returns
( hich supply much of our clearest e idence for brother-sister
marriage), pointing to the
unli elihood that of the fifty-si recorded men aged o er fifty,

approaching 90 per cent had
biological sons li ing in their households.2
A fe returns thro up specific anomalies hich could ell be e
plained in terms of a
silent adoption. Huebner cites one case, not in ol ing brother-
sister marriage, here
copies (of copies) of t o consecuti e census returns, in hich the
siblings Ani os and
Thamistis are clearly recorded as sharing both parents, are follo
ed on the same papyrus
by a statement by Ani os that she is his sister only on the
maternal side, her father being
un no n. This ob ious discrepancy indicates that some families
tidied up their family
trees for the official census returns, hile remembering the true
relationships hen it came
to inheritance.3 In another instance, hich does in ol e a sibling
marriage, the omission of
1 S. Huebner, Brother-sister marriage in Roman Egypt: A
curiosity of Human ind or a idespread family
strategy , JRS 97 (2007), 21-49. Her article has already pro o ed
one response: S. Remi sen and W. larysse,
Incest or adoption Brother-sister marriage in Roman Egypt re
isited , JRS 9 (200 ), 53- 1. Neither is mentioned
by P. J. randsen, Incestuous and lose- in Marriage in Ancient
Egypt and Persia: an E amination of the E idence
(2009), hich appeared ust in time for us to ta e account of it.
These three or s are subse uently cited by authors
surnames only, as also are the follo ing: R. S. Bagnali and B.
W. rier, The Demography of Roman Egypt (1994
ith re isions and supplements in the 2nd edn, 200 ) S. Bussi,
Mariages endogames en Egypte , Re ue Histori ue
de Droit ran ais et Etranger 0 (2002), 1-22 E. L ddec ens,

gyptische Ehe ertr ge (i9 0). 2 Huebner, 3 -7. Her argument
from the o er-representation of t ins (37- ) is less compelling.
The incidence of
coe als e plicitly described as t ins (four cases, out of se eral
hundred) accords ith biological e pectation, and
the larger group of cases here siblings are recorded ith the same
age (at least eight cases) are ade uately e plained
by Bagnali and rier (43-4) as the result of imprecise reporting
(understandable especially in se eral cases here the
coe als are not the declarant s o n children, or are mature
adults). Their seminal analysis of the census returns,
despite its methodological care and caution, had already
prompted other reser ations (e.g. Tim Par in s re ie in
BM R 95.03.20, or W. Scheidel, Death on the Nile: Disease and
the Demography of Roman Egypt (2001), 11 - 0). 3 Huebner, 3 ,
referring to Bagnali and rier catt., Pr-131-i, Pr-145-i (P.Lond. II
324, pp. 3-4 W. hr. 20 ,
dated A.D. 1 1). This te t incidentally sho s that indi iduals
could produce past census declarations as e idence of
their relationships, but its e act purpose is unclear. If Ani os ere
trying to contest Thamistis claim to his paternal
inheritance, as Huebner suggests, the census e tracts ould ha e
had the opposite of the desired effect, undermining
his case. Since the tone of Ani os co ering letter seems more
supporti e than antagonistic, his purpose as perhaps
to further her claim to some inheritance on the maternal side
(not actually from their mother, ho as probably
long dead, being absent from the return of A.D. 145).
JRS 99 (2009), pp. 104-139. World opyright Reser ed.
E clusi e Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of
Roman Studies 2009
2014 11:45:05 AM

INHERITAN E STRATEGIES IN GRE O-ROMAN EGYPT IO5
the daughter Dios orous from the Theognostos family s census
return of A.D. 1 7 initially
loo s li e e idence for her later adoption by the family to become
Theognostos ife.4
Ho e er, silent adoption does not pro ide a con incing e
planation for the ast
ma ority of cases of putati e brother-sister marriage, both those
recorded in the census
returns and those in the epi risis te ts ( hich include lengthy and
full family trees to sup-
port claims to hereditary pri ileged status) and a range of other
e idence (these last much
more e tensi e than the handful mentioned by Huebner).5 In
their recent response to
Huebner, Remi sen and larysse (see note 1) ha e already gi en se
eral reasons hy her
e planation cannot be sustained: first, contemporary Gree and
Roman commentators
ere clear that the inhabitants of Egypt did practise full brother-
sister marriage, uni uely
among the peoples of the Roman Empire second, the
papyrological e idence conflicts
ith her hypothesis because neither the family structures (notably
the number of sons) nor
the patterns of nomenclature in families here sibling marriage is
recorded meet the
e pectations demanded by her hypothesis.

We ould add a further reason for re ecting Huebner s e
planation, hich goes to the
heart of her case. Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt differed
significantly in both family struc-
ture and inheritance patterns from the parts of the Gree orld
here adoption as
idely practised as an inheritance strategy. A ey aspect of this
difference lay in the legal
and social position of omen, and their capacity to inherit and o
n property in their o n
right e en hen they had brothers. This not only rendered it
unnecessary for families ith-
out sons to adopt their sons-in-la , but fundamentally affected
the relationship of daugh-
ters and sons ithin the household in ays that made brother-sister
marriage an attracti e
option. We hope to ustify these rather s eeping claims in detail
in the second half of this
article. But first e need to address the uestion of scholarly
aporia hen faced ith the
difficulty of e plaining the Greco-Egyptians departure from the
uni ersal human incest
taboo .
Huebner offers her e planation in light of the scholarly
consensus that: There ere no
specific and compelling economic circumstances in Roman
Egypt that could ha e induced
ide s aths of the population to consider marrying their children
to one another, against
Gree , Roman, and Egyptian cultural prohibitions. ... In other
ords, e eryone agrees
that it is difficult to e plain brother-sister marriage as a peculiar

local tradition. But is
the problem really as intractable as this suggests 7 Perhaps here
scholars go rong is in
loo ing for a single, e clusi e and conclusi e e planation. What e
need to find is not one
particular feature of Greco-Roman Egypt that uni uely led to the
spread of brother-sister
marriage amongst the population, but a distincti e con uncture
of se eral circumstances,
hich indi idually may not be uni ue, or ade uate as e planations
in themsel es. Our
main intention here is to demonstrate that Ptolemaic, and
particularly Roman, Egypt pro-
duced ust such a distincti e con uncture of circumstances hich
made brother-sister
marriage both morally acceptable to its inhabitants and an
attracti e strategy for some of
4 Huebner, 43, on Bagnali and rier, 127 n. 3, ith Hm-1 7-i, Hm-
215-i, Hm-215-2, Hm-229-i. But the rest of
the family s archi e sho s her inheriting from her childless uncle
along ith her brothers (though apparently not
directly from her father), and becoming in ol ed in family
property transactions in ays that strongly imply that
she as born to the family: P. J. Si pestei n, Theognostos alias
Moros and his family , PE 7 (19 9), 213-1 . The
a.D. 1 7 census data are ta en from an unpublished, long and e
tremely fragmentary gymnasial epi risis document,
and may be incomplete cf. P. an Minnen, AI AITO
YMNAIIOY: Gree omen and the Gree elite in the
metropolis of Roman Egypt , in H. Melaerts and L. Mooren
(eds), Le r le et le statut de la femme en Egypte
hell nisti ue, romaine et by antine. Actes du collo ue
international, Bru elles-Leu en 2.7-2.9 No embre 1997
(2002), 337-53, at 345. The census returns any ay

systematically under-register girls aged under fi e: Bagnali and
rier, 1.
5 We list all cases no n to us, from the census returns and all
other e idence, in the Appendi .
Huebner, 2 the preceding pages summari e the main theories
put for ard hitherto, and the reasons for
re ecting them.
7 cf. Huebner, 22: one of the most intractable problems in the
social history of Graeco-Roman Egypt , and
randsen, 129: Without any ne compelling e idence, there is still
no reasonable e planation for the lac of an
incest taboo among the Persians and to some e tent among the
Egyptians .
2014 11:45:05 AM
I0 JANE ROWLANDSON AND RYOSUKE TAKAHASHI
them to adopt in practice. There is little about our e planation
that is holly ne , but
through the combination of different elements, and greater
precision in assessing the e i-
dence, e hope to present a more conclusi e case.
To be con incing, any e planation for brother-sister marriage in
Greco-Roman Egypt
needs to achie e t o things: firstly, to sho ho a practice
regarded as incestuous
allegedly by all other human societies could be seen as morally

acceptable in Egypt and
secondly, to pro ide reasons hy the practice should ha e become
idespread among the
population, at least for se eral generations in the Roman period.
Earlier e planations in
terms of economic interest or inheritance strategy ha e
foundered because, although not
holly ithout force, they are not in themsel es strong enough to
counter the moral argu-
ment: the Egyptians ere not so uni uely beset by the problems of
property fragmentation
through inheritance that this alone ade uately e plains their lac
of moral repugnance at
the ery idea of marriage bet een full brother and sister. In the ne
t t o sections, e
therefore first re ie the uestion of ho and hy the practice of
sibling marriage became
morally acceptable to the people of Egypt, before turning to loo
more closely at the
e idence from Roman Egypt, and the e amples hich illustrate ho
brother-sister mar-
riage fits into the pre ailing family and inheritance structures.
II IN EST AND THE GREEKS
Many scholars, including Huebner, routinely apply the terms
incest and incestuous to
the phenomenon of brother-sister marriage in Roman Egypt. By
our o n cultural stand-
ards (both the Western Judaeo- hristian and Japanese
traditions), and those of contempo-
rary Roman obser ers, these unions ere of course incestuous but
in using the term so
freely e ris importing the unconscious assumption that incest
has an absolute and uni-

ersal definition, grounded in biology or in the fundamental
structures of human society.
This is particularly unhelpful in ie of the eighty conceptual
baggage hich incest
carries in anthropological and socio-biological scholarship, and
in effect concedes that the
phenomenon defies normal e planation before the argument has
e en started. Endogamy
certainly has some biological ris s, but the fact that societies
patently differ in defining
hat counts as incest sho s that the incest taboo , li e all taboos, o
es more to culture
than to biology.9 E en studies hich argue for the biological
foundation of incest a ersion
propose that the ey factor is not genetic relatedness as such but
length of co-residence (the
Westermarc hypothesis ) thus adopted siblings brought up
together should be e pected
to sho as much a ersion to one another as biological siblings.10
It is important to obser e that hat e ha e to e plain is not the
complete absence of
an incest taboo in Roman Egypt, but rather hy the boundary bet
een permitted and
K. Hop ins, Brother-sister marriage in Roman Egypt , omparati
e Studies in Society and History 22 (19 0),
303-54, at 304-7, summari es the main anthropological
approaches. Whereas for L i-Strauss, the incest taboo
mar s the crucial step in the transition from nature to culture,
distinguishing man ind from animals, other scholars
use the fact that some animals, including mammals, a oid
mating ith close in to argue an e olutionary
e planation for human incest a oidance. 9 As S. L. Ager,

amiliarity breeds: incest and the Ptolemaic dynasty , JHS 125
(2005), 1-34 notes (11-12), studies
seem often to lac scholarly impartiality, failing to allo for
socio-economic and other factors in their eagerness to
confirm the e pectation that incest causes genetic damage cf.
randsen, especially 1 . And the studies suggest that
at orst, half the offspring of endogamous unions ould sho no
deleterious genetic effects. See also W. Scheidel,
The biology of brother-sister marriage in Roman Egypt: an
interdisciplinary approach , in W. Scheidel, Measuring
Se , Age and Death in the Roman Empire (199 ), 9-51.
10 D. Lieberman, J. Tooby and L. osmides, Does morality ha e a
biological basis An empirical test of the
factors go erning moral sentiments related to incest ,
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 270 (2003),
19-2 usefully sets out the issues and gi es further references,
although their attempt to refute the ie that incest
a ersion is culturally rather than biologically grounded is
unpersuasi e both because their model of cultural
transmission is too crude, and their data pool (1 2 Santa Barbara
undergraduates) lac s significant cultural
di ersity. See also the or s cited in Huebner, n. 1.
2014 11:45:05 AM
INHERITAN E STRATEGIES IN GRE O-ROMAN EGYPT 107
prohibited unions as dra n to allo marriage of full brother and
sister, hich other

societies prohibit.11 There are, so far as e are a are, no unions
of parents and children
attested throughout the papyri and the other oluminous e idence
from Roman Egypt and
the one papyrological reference to incest in the period before
the onstitutio Antoniniana
imposed Roman legal norms on the Egyptian population relates
to an alleged union of
father and daughter.12 And the scarcity of e idence for uncle-
niece marriage perhaps sug-
gests a more general inhibition about close- in inter-
generational marriage, e en though it
as e plicitly permitted in Roman la (and not uncommon in Gree
cities).13
Sha has usefully dra n attention to the fact that, until after the
period under discus-
sion here, Gree lac ed any single term for incest , e ui alent to
Latin incestum , instead
using periphrastic e pressions hich refer to each relationship, as
e find, for instance, in
Lysias 14.41: oi lis no o ao f aipf Kaai , oi e a aoyyey aai, o
s
Boya pco rca e yey aai ( many of them ha e ta en mistresses,
others ha e lain ith
their sisters, and others ha e fathered children by their
daughters ). This difference, as
Sha remar s, indicates, in itself, a different attitude to ards
close- in marriages .14
Ne ertheless, he asserts that in the Gree city-states, full
brother-sister marriage e o ed
feelings of deep re ulsion , and attitudes to half-sibling
marriage ere at least ambi alent.
The e idence repays more detailed consideration, especially for
lassical Athens, hich is

the only ell-documented case and, moreo er, formed the model
for much Ale andrian
la .15
Philo famously asserted that Solon at Athens had permitted
marriage bet een half-
siblings on the father s side, but prohibited it for those of the
same mother, hile the
Spartan la gi er ordained the precise opposite.1 Despite the
suspicious symmetry of this
contrast (elaborated further by the antithesis bet een the licence
accorded to the Egypt-
ians and Moses total prohibition of sibling unions), Athenian e
idence from the fifth and
fourth centuries B.c. confirms that Philo is correct about
Athenian la . Most significant,
because of its conte t supporting his claim to citi enship, is the
statement of Eu itheus in
Demosthenes 57.21: or my grandfather married his sister, not on
the mother s side
( e )f y p Ti T T O ou u yri ue o uo ir p a ). This point, hich
is mentioned
only here in the speech, as clearly not a ey issue in the attac on
Eu itheus, as e might
11 cf. R. Alston, Searching for the Romano-Egyptian family , in
M. George (ed.), The Roman amily in the
Empire: Rome, Italy, and Beyond (2005), 129-57, at 139.
12 P.O y. II 237 col. ii 2 : thugatromei ia. The conte t (col. ii
19-2 ) ma es clear that this as illegal it is one
of the incidental allegations brought by a man in a dispute ith
his father-in-la (held before the prefect on 2 June
a.D. 12 ), cited as a precedent in the celebrated petition of
Dionysia concerning the right of Egyptian fathers to
dissol e a daughter s marriage against her ill. The father-in-la ,

in the ords of his ad ocate, refusing to tolerate
this hybris, used the po er allo ed to him by the la s , and
retaliated ith a counter-charge of bia against his son-
in-la . ather-daughter marriage is attested for 1 th Dynasty
pharaohs: B. M. Bryan, The eighteenth dynasty
before the Amarna period (e. 1550-1352 B ) , in I. Sha (ed.),
The O ford History of Ancient Egypt (2000), 21 -71,
especially 2 7. A possible father-daughter (or alternati ely half-
sibling) marriage proposed by E. Young, A possible
consanguinous marriage in the time of Philip Arrhidaeus , JAR
E 4 (19 5), 9-71, as re ected by E. J. Sherman in
D edhor the Sa iour: statue base OI 105 9 , JEA 7 (19 1), 2-102,
but randsen (40-1) regards it as a possible
adoption of Persian practice by a collaborator during the Second
Persian Period. 13 Gnomon of the Idios Logos 23, translated in
n. 47 belo . Note the strongly negati e interpretation or a oman s
dream of ha ing se ith her son gi en by an Egyptian dream-boo
of the second century A.D., P. arlsberg 13 see
randsen, 43.
14 B. D. Sha , E plaining incest: brother-sister marriage in
Graeco-Roman Egypt , Man n.s. 27 (1992), 2 7-99, at
270. The term porneia included incest: Bussi, -7. urther
discussion and e amples of the ocabulary are gi en by
E. Karab lias, Inceste, mariage, et strat gies matrimoniales dans
l Ath nes classi ue , in G. Thiir (ed.), Symposion
19 5: Vortr ge ur griechischen und hellenistischen
Rechtsgeschichte (Ringberg, 14.- . Juli 19 ) (19 9), 233-51.
15 P. M. raser, Ptolemaic Ale andria (1972), I, no- 11.
1 Spec. leg. 3.22-4. Other sources do not e plicitly attribute the
la to Solon: Schol. to Ar., louds 1371 Nepos,
imon 1.2 Seneca, Apocolocyntosis Minucius eli , Oct. 31.3.
The main reason for re ecting the attribution is
that Plutarch does not mention it in his e tensi e account of
Solon s legislation concerning omen and marriage

(including the la hich permitted heiresses to marry their
husband s ne t of in if their husbands had pro ed
impotent: Solon 20).
2014 11:45:05 AM
IO JANE ROWLANDSON AND RYOSUKE TAKAHASHI
ha e e pected if there ere any doubt about the legality of such
marriages, or e en a uni-
ersal repugnance for them. But the emphasis on o ) no ur Tp a
indicates that this as
important to the alidity of the marriage, and confirms that the la
of lassical Athens
allo ed the marriage of paternal, but not uterine, half-siblings.
Whether or not the la
should literally be ascribed to Solon ma es no difference for its
e istence in the lassical
period. The marriage bet een Themistocles son Archeptolis and
his daughter Mnesipto-
lema by a different mother as therefore legal, as perhaps also as
imon s marriage to
his (half )-sister Elpinice.17 The allegations of incest against
imon form part of the politi-
cal slander and infighting bet een the families of allias, imon
and Alcibiades, li e the
accusations against the younger Alcibiades used to ustify
Hipponi os di orce from his
sister.1 They do not pro ide e idence that the Athenians in
general disappro ed of

brother-sister marriage e en bet een paternal half-siblings.
Much of the other contemporary e idence cited for a general
disappro al of sibling mar-
riage in lassical Athens relates to a particular conte t in drama.
In the louds (1371-2),
Strepsiades indignation at his son s moral impropriety in
reciting from Euripides Aeolus
specifically alludes to uterine sibling marriage:
SI)0 ) fla E plT Ol) pf G V TW (D K VSl
e , G) s KaKc, f uo ur Tp a e ( )f .
And at once he began one of Euripides tales, ho a brother -
God forbid - as
scre ing his sister of the same mother.
This play, dealing ith the union of Aeolus son and daughter,
Macareus and anace,
e idently raised issues hich more traditionally-minded Athenians
found disturbing
(Aristophanes brings it up again in more general terms in rogs
50, 10 1), precisely
because they lay at the interface bet een ritten and un ritten la
and popular moral-
ity.19 But this does not tell us ho idespread disappro al as, and
hether it e tended
to unions bet een paternal half-siblings indeed, Aristophanes
stress on the uterine
relationship (Macareus and anace ere of course full siblings)
helps to confirm the popu-
lar acceptability of marriage bet een half-siblings on the father s
side.
No ritten la as needed to prohibit parent-child unions at Athens
(or, it seems, other

Gree cities) the moral repugnance they inspired as enshrined
as one of the un ritten
la s ordained by the gods.20 In contrast, there as a ritten la ,
attributed to Solon,
specifically permitting marriage bet een paternal siblings but
prohibiting those of uterine
brother and sister. The fact that this ritten clarification as
necessary indicates that
some people ere practising sibling marriage, and the outcome
loo s rather li e a com-
promise designed to satisfy the interests of those fathers ho
ished to consolidate their
family line produced from serial marriages hile appeasing the
moral disappro al of
17 Plutarch, Themistocles 32: O K (b f O if Tpioc. Nepos, imon
1, defended the legitimacy of imon s marriage,
but another tradition, traceable bac to Eupolis, made them full
siblings and incestuous: see J. K. Da ies, Athenian
Propertied amilies (1971), 302-3 (cf. Plutarch, imon 4
Andocides 4.33 Athenaeus, Deipn. 13.5 9e). 1 Lysias 14.2 -9
see . A. o , Incest, inheritance and the political forum in fifth-
century Athens , J 5 (19 9),
34-4 , especially 40-1. or Da id Gribble, the allegations of
incest against the elder Alcibiades e ploited its
association ith aristocratic e cess, the feminine and barbarian:
Alcibiades and Athens: A Study in Literary
Presentation (1999), 7 .
19 . M l e, Tlo co e gi c o ai/ui a i Euripides Aiolos und der
Gesch isterin est im lassischen
Athen , PE 114 (199 ), 37-55 cf. K. Do er (ed.), Aristophanes,
rogs (1993), line 50 commentary, ith p. 1 .
Plato s allusion at La s 3 c must also be specifically to this play.
The Aeolus as not popular reading in Roman
Egypt: e ha e ust one papyrus, containing the argument of the

play (P.O y. VII 24 7).
20 Plato, La s 3 3- 393, enophon, Mem. 4.4.19-23, discussed by
Karab lias, op. cit. (n. 14), 23 -7. Plato had
tightened his ie s on se ual relationships since Republic 4 ib-c,
here he banned all unions of ascendants and
descendants, but sa no ob ection to the marriage of brother and
sister (his definition of brother and sister is
admittedly so broad that it ould be difficult to find marriage
partners other ise). But his condemnation of
brother-sister unions in the La s must be seen alongside his re
ection also of homose ual and adulterous
relationships, hich ere certainly practised idely in contemporary
Athens.
2014 11:45:05 AM
INHERITAN E STRATEGIES IN GRE O-ROMAN EGYPT IO9
se ual unions of children born from the same omb. o , ho e er,
doubts that the pro-
hibition on uterine half-sibling marriage should be seen
specifically as an incest taboo.21
Gi en the limited circumstances in hich paternal half-sibling
marriage could occur (the
need to ha e a son and daughter by t o different marriages), and
the relati e paucity of
our e idence for Athenian marriage, it is hardly surprising that e
no of so fe attested
cases. But the close analysis of the e idence has, e hope, sho n
both ho strong the

e idence is for the e istence of the Solonian la , and that there is
in fact little sign of moral
reser ation about marriages hich conformed to this la Eu itheus
attracted no odium
in the la courts for his grandparents union.
Philo s assertion that Sparta permitted marriage of uterine half-
siblings is not corrobor-
ated by any other source, and could be an in ention to ma e up
his symmetrical pattern.
But our e idence for Spartan marriages is e iguous apart from
the royal houses, hich
produce se eral cases of other close- in marriages, notably bet
een uncle and niece and
aunt and nephe . And Polybius records that adelphic polyandry,
ith three, four or e en
more brothers sharing one ife, as an ancestral and pre alent
Spartan custom (12. b. ).
Hod inson sees all these practices as designed to preser e family
inheritances intact.22
Although there is little e idence from other Gree cities,
Plutarch ma es a general contrast
bet een Gree s and Romans in the formers preference for
endogamy. It thus seems
reasonable to follo Modr e e s i in seeing the practice of full
brother-sister marriage in
Roman Egypt as merely the e treme case of a general tendency
to ards endogamy in the
Gree orld.23 It may be significant that not until Diodorus,
riting ithin the orbit of the
Roman orld, do lassical riters start to remar on the Egyptian
practice.24
The marriage of Ptolemy Keraunos to his half-sister Arsinoe
ould ha e been legal at
Athens. We do not no hether it infringed Macedonian practice,

for hich our only
clear e idence is Pausanias statement that in falling in lo e ith
his full sister Arsinoe,
Ptolemy II as in no ay acting according to Macedonian customs,
but follo ing those of
his Egyptian sub ects (1.7. 1). It is no time to turn to the
Egyptian conte t of this
marriage.
Ill THE ORIGINS O ULL SIBLING MARRIAGE IN EGYPT
Despite the e plicit statements of Diodorus, Philo and Pausanias
(and Memnon, GrH
434. .7, Dio 4 . 35. 4, in addition to the other authors listed by
Remi sen and larysse), the
modern consensus is that marriage bet een full siblings as not a
genuine Egyptian
21 . A. o , Household Interests. Property, Marriage Strategies
and amily Dynamics in Ancient Athens (199 ),
11 n. 42 see also her discussion of endogamy among the ider
in-group, 31-7.
22 S. Hod inson, emale property o nership and empo erment in
lassical and Hellenistic Sparta , in
T. J. igueira (ed.), Spartan Society (2004), 103-3 , at 1 15-1 .
u Roman uestions, 10 . J. Modr e e s i, Die Gesch isterehe in der
hellenistischen Pra is und nach r mischem
Recht , RG 1 (19 4), 52- 2, especially 59- 0, particularly his
point that, once the Hellenistic legal oine had
assimilated both paternal and uterine half-sibling marriage, the
acceptance of full sibling marriage as a small step
cf. Heubner, 2 , Remi sen and larysse, 1, and randsen, 57. The
marriage of Dion of Syracuse s son and daughter
(by different mothers Plutarch, Dion ) and those ithin the He

atomid dynasty of aria (S. Hornblo er,
Mausolus (19 2), 35 - 3) may not reflect the practice of the non-
royal populations. But epigraphic e idence
pro ides se eral apparent non-royal instances: from Lycia,
Paphlagonia, perhaps Macedonia (all refs in Bussi, 3),
and Tlos TAM II 2, 593 see R. an Bremen, The Limits of
Participation (199 ), 255 n. 3). Van Bremen (ibid., 25 )
also cites numerous cases of first cousin and other close- in
marriages. See also . umont, Les unions entre
proches Doura et che les Perses , RAI (1924), 53- 2, and J.
Johnson, Dura Studies (1932), II 31.
24 1.27. 1 see belo . We cannot, of course, be sure that
Polybius ne er mentioned the custom, since his te t is
incomplete. One might also e pect Herodotus to ha e listed it
among the Egyptian re ersals of normal human
practice (2.35- ), if brother-sister marriage ere already common
in fifth-century Egypt, especially in ie of his
interest in ambyses marriages to his t o sisters (3.31), but it
perhaps did not seem so contrary to Gree and
arian customs. Note, too, its absence from Strabo s discussion
of Egyptian customs (17.2.5), a passage hich seems
to o e more to his literary sources than to his o n obser ation.
2014 11:45:05 AM
IIO JANE ROWLANDSON AND RYOSUKE TAKAHASHI
tradition. E en in the families of the pharaohs, there are no
undisputed instances of

marriage bet een full brother and sister, although consanguinous
marriages at times
became common, especially in the i th Dynasty.25 erny s classic
study of the e idence for
non-royal families ( hich includes both pri ate stelae and
fragmentary lists of uarry-
men s households at Deir el Medina) could find no certain case
of full brother-sister mar-
riage throughout the Pharaonic period, and at most si marriages
bet een half-siblings, of
hich three are ery doubtful. It must, ho e er, be remembered that
as ith the e idence
from the Ptolemaic period hich e ill consider shortly, the names
of both parents are
rarely preser ed.2 erny s strongest case is the stela of a high
priest of Ptah of the 22nd
Dynasty (945-715 b.c.), hose parents ere both described as
offspring of the high priest
of Me, Ta elot . His remaining t o instances each describe a
oman as the sister of her
husband in stelae from the Middle Kingdom (2055-1 50 b.c.),
ell before this became
standard, metaphorical, usage in the reign of Tuthmosis III
(1479-1425 b.c.).27
To these fe cases, randsen adds a handful more: a half-sibling
marriage of the Middle
Kingdom, a marriage of full siblings in a Deir el Medina family
(Dyn. 20), and t o suc-
cessi e full sibling marriages in a family of high priests in the
Bahriya Oasis (Dyn. 2 ,
4-525 b.c.).2 But of greater significance is randsen s general
point that the Egyptian
concept b t, hich is closely e ui alent to our taboo , did not co er

any regulation of
se ual practice and marriage among the members of the nuclear
family. Simply put, in
ancient Egypt, incest is not subsumed into the category of
things b t - e il, chaos, things
taboo - and thus must be assumed to ha e had a different
ontological status in this
ancient culture .29 His boo does not go on to pursue hat its
ontological status may ha e
been, or, indeed, hether the Egyptians can meaningfully be said
to ha e had a concept of
incest at all.
Wor on Egyptian inship and its terminology brings out further
points hich may be
rele ant. The Egyptian repertoire of terms for in as unusually
restricted, and although
they could be combined to e press e act relationships ( son s son
etc.), the simple terms
commonly ha e an e tended meaning co ering se eral different
biological (and marital)
relationships, thus:
t father, paternal/maternal grandfather, father-in-la (male
ascendant)
m t mother, mother s mother, mother-in-la (female ascendant)
s 3 son, grandson, great-grandson, son-in-la (male descendant)
53 daughter, grand-daughter, daughter-in-la (female
descendant)
sn brother, mother s brother, father s brother, father s brother s
son, mother s
sister s son, brother s son, sister s son, brother-in-la (male
collateral) husband
(from Dyn. 1 )

snt sister, mother s sister, father s sister, mother s sister s
daughter, sister s daughter,
brother s daughter, sister-in-la (female collateral) ife (from
Dyn. 1 )
25 Bryan, op. cit. (n. 12), 22 , but cf. A. H. Gardiner, Egypt of
the Pharaohs (19 1), 172-3. Since the pharaohs ere
polygamous, it can be uncertain to us hich ife had borne their
arious offspring.
2 J. erny, onsanguineous marriages in pharaonic Egypt , JEA 40
(1954), 23-9. Of 490 marriages recorded on
35 stelae bet een c. 21 0 and c. 1550 B.c., only 4 name both
parents of both husband and ife all are different
(thus e cluding full sibling marriage) 97 cases name only their
mothers, of hich 95 e clude full sibling marriage
but lea e a theoretical possibility of paternal half-sibling
marriage. In the remaining t o cases, the mothers of both
partners ha e identical, but ery common, names, ma ing
consanguinity possible but not certain. Of
uarrymen s households (22 pro iding e idence of parentage), 11
gi e the parentage of both married partners, all
different 10 more name only the fathers, e cluding full sibling
marriage in the final instance, the mothers of both
partners seem to ha e the same name, but again are not
necessarily the same person (the fathers are certainly
different). This detailed summary of erny s findings has been gi
en to sho the difficulty of definiti ely pro ing
or e cluding the occurrence of full sibling marriage e en here
the e idence seems at first sight e tensi e.
L erny, op. cit. (n. 2 ) one or his Middle Kingdom cases (Berlin
13 75) is the same as that ldentihed in G. Robins,
The relationships specified by Egyptian inship terms of the
Middle and Ne Kingdoms , d E 54 (1979) 197-217,
at 205 n. cf. 207 n. 2.

2 randsen, 3 -9.
29 randsen, 9.
2014 11:45:05 AM
INHERITAN E STRATEGIES IN GRE O-ROMAN EGYPT III
These e tended meanings could also occur in compounds thus
sn t included both father s
brother and father s mother s brother.30 Moreo er, as erny
notes, Nor did the language
feel an urgent need of adding to this stoc , and e find the series
augmented in optic only
by the masculine s m and feminine some for in-la s .31 Thus the
Egyptian language of the
Ptolemaic and Roman periods continued to employ an unusually
small range of inship
ocabulary, hich did not necessarily distinguish, for instance,
brothers from uncles or
sisters from first cousins. This suggests the absence of a sharp
conceptual boundary, hich
may ha e facilitated the mo e from marrying cousins to marrying
siblings.
erny connects the restricted inship terminology ith the practice
of married couples
forming a ne household rather than li ing in either parental
home, again citing the Deir
el Medina household lists for the predominance of nuclear
families. While this isolated

community of craftsmen building the royal tombs may not be
entirely typical, and other
e idence indicates a broader perception of the family unit, it
offers a pertinent parallel to
the later Ptolemaic and Roman census data discussed belo .32
rom ninety-t o Egyptian marriage documents (spanning the ninth
century B.c. to the
first century A.D., but mostly Ptolemaic), Pestman identified
only one li ely consanguinous
marriage, of paternal half-siblings there are, ho e er, other
possible instances.33 Para-
do ically, marriage documents may under-represent the actual e
tent of sibling marriages
during the Roman period, their incidence in both marriage and
di orce documents is
mar edly less than in both the census and epi risis records.34
The fact is that the e isting
e idence does not allo us either to pro e or to dispro e that full
sibling marriage as
practised in pre-Ptolemaic Egypt, and li e ise that half-sibling
marriages ere more than
e tremely rare, and e should remain agnostic.
Since he is the earliest e tant lassical riter to mention brother-
sister marriage, as a
practice ordained by Egyptian la and contrary to normal human
custom, Diodorus testi-
mony and its possible origin deser e particular scrutiny.
Scholars agree that, apart from a
fe eye- itness touches ta en from his isit in 59 b.c., his account
of Egypt is based closely
30 This list is adapted from Robins, op. cit. (n. 27), 204 in light
of L. Alesiceli, Pri ate Life in Ne Kingdom Egypt
(2002), 54-5, hich is based on a ider range of studies.

31 J. erny, A note on the ancient Egyptian family , in Studi in
onore di Aristide alderini e Roberto Paribeni II
( 957)- 51-5, at 52: the terms, co ering both father- and son-in-
la , and both mother- and daughter-in-la
respecti ely, already e isted in the Middle Kingdom s( )m and s(
)mt, see Robins, op. cit. (n. 27), 209), but ere
e tremely rare. The ords S3 and s ere gradually superseded in
Later Egyptian by ne ords ith the same
sense ( optic sere and s re).
32 erny, op. cit. (n. 31), 53. The fragmentary household list is
still not published, but sections are discussed and
translated in A. G. McDo ell, Village Life in Ancient Egypt:
Laundry Lists and Lo e Songs (1999), 51-2. See also
Mes ell, op. cit. (n. 30), 52-5 for larger family groups.
33 P. W. Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property in
Ancient Egypt: a ontribution to Establishing the Legal
Position of the Woman (19 1), 3-4: P.Or.Inst. 174 1 (no P. hic.
Ha . 1, 3 5/4 b.c.) see also our Appendi
belo , items ii ( ith E. ru -Uribe, A 30th Dynasty document of
renunciation from Edfu , Enchoria 13 (19 5), 41-9,
at 4 -9), i and iii. We must discount P.Hamburg dem. 7 (item
ii), cited by Modr e e s i, op. cit. (n. 23), 5 n. 9
(based on Erichsen s preliminary translation hich made the
husband s parents full siblings, and the di orcing pair
first cousins). Although the full publication in P.Ha .Liiddec
ens 13 gi es the husband s filiation in lines 5- as
identical to his ife s (11-12), this is clearly a scribal error other
te ts confirm that they ere second cousins, see
B. Muhs, ractions of houses in Ptolemaic Ha ara , in S. Lippert
and M. Schentuleit (eds), Graeco-Roman ayum
- Te ts and Archaeology (200 ), 1 7-97, especially 194.
34 U. Yiftach- iran o, Marriage and Marital Arrangements: A
History of the Gree Marriage Document in Egypt.

4th century B E-tfh century E (2003), 9 -102: ritten marriage
documents ere not essential for a alid
marriage, but ere dra n up (often many years after the couple
began li ing as man and ife) hen thought
necessary to secure the financial or other material arrangements.
lose- in marriages could more fre uently
dispense ith documentation, because family peer pressure pro
ided effecti e security. While siblings comprise 22.5
per cent of marriages in the Arsinoite census returns, they are
less than 4 per cent among the Roman Arsinoite
marriage documents (2 of 5 or less than per cent including a
further half-sibling marriage): ibid., 99 e en adding
the restored M. hr. 312 PR I 2 , the proportion is only 7.1 per
cent. These four Arsinoite cases are the only
brother-sister marriages among 10 marriage documents from
Roman Egypt as a hole listed by Yiftach- iran o
(ibid., 2 : under 5 per cent). Di orce: one sibling marriage in t
enty di orce documents from Roman Egypt (to
c. A.D. 212) listed by Yiftach- iran o, ibid., 35 n. 41. or the epi
risis records, see n. 2 belo .
2014 11:45:05 AM
112 JANE ROWLANDSON AND RYOSUKE TAKAHASHI
on earlier riters, especially Hecataeus of Abdera, although they
differ about the scale of
his reliance on this one author and on ho far Diodorus has
manipulated his source
material.35 Huebner attributes Diodorus statement about
brother-sister marriage to

Hecataeus and Manetho: It is thus not going too far to assume
that these court historians
sought historical co er for the incestuous dynastic marriage of
Ptolemy II and his full sister
Arsinoe II, an act no n to ha e scandali ed the Gree orld, by see
ing refuge in an
ancient Egyptian la permitting brother-sister marriage. 3
Hecataeus can be dismissed
on this point it is unli ely that he rote late enough to reflect the
response to Ptolemy and
Arsinoe s marriage c. 27 b.c., and in any case, he is not
regarded as the source for this
particular section of Diodorus account (2 . -27. ). 37 Manetho
ould fit the chronology
better, and has already been suggested as the source, perhaps
indirect, of ch. 2 . 3 At any
rate, the source for 27.1-2 as someone interested in Egyptian la
, and specifically
marriage la (it refers to the terms of Egyptian marriage
contracts), hich Diodorus seems
to ha e patch or ed into material dra n from praises of Isis.39
Just ho deeply Ptolemy s marriage to his full sister scandali ed
the Gree orld is
unclear, since Sotades ibe is our only contemporary e idence.40
Other poets leapt in ith
a positi e spin , li ening the marriage to the di ine union of eus
and Hera (Theocritus
17.12 -34 cf. Herodas 1.30), and any opposition uic ly died do
n, partly at least
because of the idespread affection hich the charismatic Arsinoe
inspired.41 The deifica-
tion of the couple (in 272/1 b.c., hile both ere still ali e) ith the
title Theoi Adelphoi
e o ed the e emplary marriage of the Egyptian di ine pair Isis
and Osiris, rooting the

dynasty in Egyptian tradition through a myth also familiar to
the Gree s.42 By the ne t
reign, the union of royal siblings had become such a lynchpin of
Ptolemaic monarchy that
Ptolemy Ill s ife Berenice II as represented as his sister e en
though merely his half-
cousin (his biological sister Berenice had been married off to
Antiochus II).43 The marriage
of Ptolemy IV and his sister, the first sibling marriage in the
dynasty to produce a child,
pro o ed no recorded disappro al, e en from the hostile Polybius
similarly, the marriage
to his sister is not one of the charges le elled against the odious
Ptolemy Physcon
(Euergetes II).44
But it as not only their royal and di ine status that reconciled
public opinion to the
Ptolemies incestuous marriages. There are many cross-cultural
parallels for the practice of
incest ithin royal or noble families, ser ing to ele ate and
differentiate them from
35 The e tremes are represented by O. Murray, Hecataeus of
Abdera and Pharaonic ingship , JEA 5 (1970),
141-71, and A. Burton, Diodorus Siculus I: A ommentary
(1972), 1-34.
3 Huebner, 24 cf. Remi sen and larysse s argument against her
case here, 55.
37 Murray, op. cit. (n. 35), 14 , ith 149 n. 3 cf. Jacoby, GrH 2 4
25. The e idence clearly places Hecataeus
or in the reign of Ptolemy I, and probably before the end of the
fourth century: see S. A. Stephens, Seeing Double:
Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Ale andria (2003), 32, ith
further references.

3 Burton, op. cit. (n. 35), 1 . 39 cf. Burton, op. cit. (n. 35),
comm. ad loc but she offers no opinion on 27.1-2.
40 Against the assumption that Sotades represented a more
idespread Gree abhorrence, see E. D. arney, The
reappearance of royal sibling marriage in Ptolemaic Egypt ,
Parola del Passato 42 (19 7), 420-39, at 42 -9, and
G. Weber, The Hellenistic rulers and their poets: silencing
dangerous critics , Ane. Soc. 29 (199 /9), 147-74,
especially 1 5.
41 rraser, op. cit. (n. 15), 117-1 . 1 he lac or orrspring from
this marriage is unsurprising, and need not rerlect any
orry about consummating the incestuous union: Arsinoe as
already aged about forty at the time of the marriage
(eight years older than her brother). urther, Ptolemy already had
three sons and a daughter by his first ife,
Arsinoe I ( ho ere no adopted by their step-mother), and ould
not ant his chosen heir to face a contested
succession as his o n had been (on hich see G. H lbl, A History
of the Ptolemaic Empire (2001), 3 ).
42 H lbl, op. cit. (n. 41), 112. 43 See e.g. I. Herrn. Mag. 1
I.Philae I 2.
44 Ager, op. cit. (n. 9), 2 . As she notes, it as Ptolemy IV s e
tra-marital liaisons, not his marriage, hich aroused
criticism. Ager s connection of sibling marriage ith the motif of
truphe (opulence) in the pro ection of the dynasty
ma es good sense (ibid., 22-7).
2014 11:45:05 AM

INHERITAN E STRATEGIES IN GRE O-ROMAN EGYPT II3
ordinary people.45 It is therefore ery stri ing that Diodorus,
Philo and other lassical
sources present Egyptian brother-sister marriage not as the e
clusi e prerogati e of the
royal house, but a practice sanctioned by la for the Egyptian
people as a hole.4 urther,
as Remi sen and larysse ha e already pointed out, the fact that
the Roman go ernors of
Egypt ere illing to condone a practice so contrary to their o n la
s on incest suggests
that they found brother-sister marriage e plicitly sanctioned by
la , not merely by
custom.47 The ob ious conte t for such a la is Ptolemy
Philadelphos marriage to his full
sister. To deflect potential hostility by ma ing all his sub ects
complicit in his uncustomary
marriage, it seems that Ptolemy issued a prostagma ma ing such
marriages legal for the
hole population, including both Gree s and Egyptians of the
chora and the citi en body
of Ale andria (and presumably also the other Gree cities, Nau
ratis and Ptolemais).4
But this still does not e plain Diodorus and Philo s e plicit
references to the promulga-
tion of an Egyptian la gi er, unless the Ptolemaic royal la as
itself presented as ha ing
an Egyptian precedent. Despite the doubts of Remi sen and
larysse49 that a precedent in
Egyptian la could effecti ely ustify the marriage to Gree
opinion, the e idence seems
clear that this as ho the Ptolemaic la as publicised. There ere

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