Brother-Sister Marriage in Roman Egypt
Who would have thought?
According to official census returns from Roman Egypt dating to the first to third centuries A.D., more than sixteen per cent, or twenty-two of the one hundred and thirty-six documented marriages in which the degree of kinship between spouses is ascertainable, were celebrated between full brothers and sisters and four-fifths of these marriages belonged in the second century alone…Therefore, despite the established assumption that no amount of cultural indoctrination could fully offset the innate aversion to mature incestuous relationships, it yet appears that in more than one-third of all families in Roman Egypt men who had a sister married her instead of looking for a bride outside the family. In fact, this custom seems to have represented something of a ‘cultural norm’, a norm ‘completely unknown in any other time or place’.
Sabine R. Huebner, “‘Brother-Sister’ Marriage in Roman Egypt”, The Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 97, 2007, pp. 21-49.
October 28th, 2008 at 8:49 am
It is not ‘completely unknown in any other time or place,’ Rav seems to have been the product of such a union see sof Sanhedrin 5a
October 28th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
noah- but see E S Rosenthal’s article in the Yalon fs.
October 30th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Noach. I know you a better reader than that. The article said it was a norm ‘completely unknown in any other time or place.’ One third century Babylonian amora’s parents relationship does not a norm make. Such a relationship might, however, explain Rav’s unusual height.