Why did the ancient Egyptians engage in all those incestuous marriages? Didnt they ever notice that incestuous marriages produce deformed children?
In Pharaonic Egypt, incestuous marriages (brother/sister, father/daughter, grandfather/granddaughter) were the prerogative of the king alone. Incestuous unions amongst commoners were restricted to the Greek and Roman eras, as a way of circumventing Greek and Roman laws that made it difficult for women to inherit property. At one time, Egyptologists thought that the right to rule Egypt was inherited through the female line, so a Pharaoh had to marry a sister or half-sister; this notion is called the heiress theory. The heiress theory has been thoroughly discredited, but many books and websites still persist in claiming that a Pharaoh married his sister to consolidate his claim to the throne. Hatshepsuts half-brother, Tuthmosis II, is often said to have married Hatshepsut to strengthen his claim to the throne because his mother was not royal. Statements like this expose a fundamental misunderstanding of the basis of Egyptian kingship. Egyptian kings were considered to be gods by their pe
