Tag: the sexes
Why Should Your Heart Not Dance?
In my Greco-Fiction project, I have briefly set aside The King Must Die in order to re-read Till We Have Faces. I have to read TWHF for a book club, but I can’t complain, really, because I was one who convinced the book club to read it for our February discussion.
If you have never heard of it, Till We Have Faces is one of C.S. Lewis’s lesser-known novels. The point of view character is a young woman, a princess in the ancient, fictional kingdom of Glome, who is cursed with an ugly face, an abusive father, and a horrible fertility goddess for a religion. Her name is Orual. The first bright spot in Orual’s life is a Greek slave her father captured in war, who becomes her tutor. The second, and much brighter, spot is her younger half-sister Psyche.
The back of the book describes it as a “timeless tale of two princesses–one beautiful and one unattractive.” Naturally, when I first picked it up, then in my late teens, I thought, “Well, I know which one of these I will identify with!” Like probably every young woman, I expected to have a grand time wallowing in self-pity on behalf of the ugly princess. However, this is not that kind of story. Orual is not envious of Psyche’s beauty. The jealousy she feels is of a very different kind.
I don’t want to give away the events of the story, because you should definitely read it. However, I do want to post a long passage from the book. This passage is very important thematically, and in terms of Orual’s character development, even though it is not an action scene.
When we topped [the ridge], and stood for a while to let the horse breathe, everything was changed. And my struggle began.
We had come into the sunlight now, too bright to look into, and warm (I threw back my cloak). Heavy dew made the grass jewel-bright. The Mountain, far greater yet also far further off than I expected, seen with the sun hanging a hand-breadth above its topmost crags, did not look like a solid thing. Between us and it was a vast tumble of valley and hill, woods and cliffs, and more little lakes than I could count. To the left and right, and behind us, the whole coloured world with all its hills was heaped up and up to the sky, with, far away, a gleam of what we call the sea. There was a lark singing; but for that, huge and ancient stillness.
And my struggle was this. You may well believe that I had set out sad enough; I came on a sad errand. Now, flung at me like frolic or insolence, there came as if it were a voice–no words–but if you made it into words it would be, “Why should your heart not dance?” It’s the measure of my folly that my heart almost answered, “Why not?” I had to tell myself over and over like a lesson the infinite reasons it had not to dance. My heart to dance? Mine whose love was taken from me, I, the ugly princess who must never look for other love, the drudge of the King, perhaps to be murdered or turned out as a beggar when my father died? And yet, it was a lesson I could hardly keep in my mind. The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other to the world’s end. The freshness and wetness all about me made me feel that I had misjudged the world; it seemed kind, and laughing, as if its heart also danced. Even my ugliness I could not quite believe in. Who can feel ugly when the heart meets delight? It is as if, somewhere inside, within the hideous face and bony limbs, one is soft, fresh, lissom and desirable.
Was I not right to struggle against this fool-happy mood? What woman can have patience with the man who can be yet again deceived by his doxy’s fawning after he has thrice proved her false? I should be just like such a man if a mere burst of fair weather, and fresh grass after a long drought, and health after sickness, could make me friends again with this god-haunted, plague-breeding, decaying, tyrannous world.
pp. 95 – 97
Themes in The King Must Die: Hellenes vs. ‘Shore People’
As part of my ongoing, yearlong foray into fiction set in the ancient Mediterranean, I am now re-reading Mary Renault’s The King Must Die. There is so much history and speculation packed into this book, that I make free to do a series of posts on different topics from it, en route to the final book review. So, buckle up! I hope you like ancient historical fiction! (And, since you are visiting Out of Babel Books, I assume you at least don’t hate it!) Today’s topic is Renault’s theme of the two conflicting cultures of Hellenes vs. what they call the “Shore People.”
On the timing of the Theseus story
I have always had the impression that the story of Theseus was one of the older historical myths. It happens when Knossos, on Crete, is still a thriving city. So, in my mind, I put it a few generations before the Iliad. Madeline Miller, author of Circe, seems to agree. In her book, Circe hears of Theseus having killed the Minotaur well before Odysseus comes to land on her island.
If you do the math, Theseus living before the Odyssey would also put him living before Agamemnon returns from the war at Troy and is slaughtered in his bath by his wife, Clytemnestra. In the play Agamemnon (written, of course, much later), Clytemnestra kills her husband in revenge for his having sacrificed their thirteen-year-old daughter before he sailed for Troy, in addition to a couple of other grudges. Like most women, I find it hard not to think Clytemnestra has a case.
Renault, however, takes a different tack. She has a teenaged Theseus hear the following story from a bard:
The song he gave us was the Lay of Mycenae: how Agamemnon the first High King took the land from the Shore Folk, and married their Queen. But while he was at war she brought back the old religion, and chose another king; and when her lord came home she sacrificed him, though he had not consented. Their son, who had been hidden by the Hellenes, came back when he was a man, to restore the Sky Gods’ worship and avenge the dead. But in his blood was the old religion, to which nothing is holier than a mother. So, when he had done justice, horror sent him mad, and the Night’s Daughters chased him half over the world.
ibid, p. 40 in my copy
So here we have Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, their son Orestes, and the Furies. At the same time, this passage raises some questions.
The Shore People and Their Appearance
The Shore People make their appearance on the very first page of The King Must Die.
Our house is Hellene, sprung from the seed of Ever-Living Zeus. We worship the Sky Gods before Mother Dia and the gods of the earth. And we have never mixed our blood with the blood of the Shore People, who had the land before us.
-ibid, p. 1
As the story progresses, it rapidly becomes obvious that the Hellenes have, in fact, mixed their blood with the blood of the Shore People. There is the story of Agamemnon, above; Theseus is said to be “blonde and blue-eyed like the Hellenes, but small and wiry like the Shore People,” and Theseus, who is very promiscuous, even has a child who “came out small and dark, but so was [his mother’s] brother.”
So we have two populations, one that is native to the Greek coastlands (or at least has been there a long time), and one that came there from the steppes. Theseus’s grandfather explains to him their ethnic history, which he got from his own grandfather:
“Long ago, he said, our people lived in the northland, beyond Olympos. He said, and he was angry when I doubted it, that they never saw the sea. Instead of water they had a sea of grass, which stretched as far as the swallow flies, from the rising to the setting sun. They lived by the increase of their herds, and built no cities; when the grass was eaten, they moved where there was more. … When they journeyed, the barons in their chariots rode round about, guarding the flocks and the women … [Lord Poseidon] told the King Horse, and the King Horse led them. When they needed new pastures, they let him loose; and he, taking care of the people as the god advised him, would smell the air seeking food and water. The barons followed him, to give battle if his passage was disputed; but only the god told him where to go.”
ibid, pp. 16 – 17
This is a description of the Indo-European lifestyle and homeland. The Indo-Europeans took their reverence for the horse, and their wheeled carts and chariots, with them wherever they went, including to Scandinavia. So the Hellenes are Indo-European, and the Shore People, presumably, Hamitic or Semitic.
The mask at the top of this post is Mycenaean. Mycenae is located in the Peloponnesian Peninsula, which is also the location of Troizen, Theseus’s home. The ancient Mycenaean culture, older than classical Greece, took its cues from the Cretan urban culture of the time. In later Greece, you get men wearing himations and women wearing finely woven chitons. This is usually how Helen of Troy, for example, is illustrated. However, she probably looked more like the Mycenaean and Cretan women. Here is someone’s attempt to reconstruct the probable hairstyle and costume of the most beautiful woman in the world:
Notice the Egyptian-style, kohl-lined eyes, and the red suns for makeup. Helen might have been blonde, being a Hellene, but her clothing was perhaps more like this.
Here is someone else, reconstructing a traditional Mycenean costume and pose:
I’m guessing these fashion choices came from the Shore People.
Theseus’s mother is described as wearing this ancient Mycenaean style. She wears a tiered, flounced skirt hung with charms, exposed breasts (what was going on, Crete and Mycenae?) and hair that is curled by the use of “crimping braids” (probably to attain a very curly look for those who do not, like the Shore People, have it naturally). Though a blonde Hellene, she is a priestess of the mother goddess, and so she takes some of her cues from the Shore People, and here is where we find the tension.
The Shore People and Their Religion
Both the Hellenes and the Shore People practice the sacrifice of their kings. However, there is a difference. For the Hellenes, it does not come on a regular schedule. Theseus’s grandfather explains:
“When the work of the King Horse was done, he was given to the god … And in those days, said my great-grandfather, as with the King Horse, so with the King. When the king was dedicated, he knew his moira [i.e. doom]. In three years, or seven, or nine, or whenever the custom was, his term would end and the god would call him. And he went consenting, or else he was no king, and no power would fall on him to lead the people. And the custom changes, Theseus, but the token never. … Later the custom altered. They ceased to offer the King at a set time. They kept him for the extreme sacrifice … And it was no one’s place to say to him, ‘It is time to make the offering.’ He was the nearest to the god, because he had consented to his moira; and he himself received the god’s commandment. And so it is still, Theseus. We know our time. … It is not the sacrifice … it is not the bloodletting that calls down power. It is the consenting, Theseus. The readiness is all.”
ibid. pp. 18 – 19
This might explain why so many kurgan burials are of high-born individuals who seem not to have died of old age.
It also, of course, explains the title of the book.
Meanwhile, it has been established that the Shore People do things a different way: “old laments have come down from the Shore People, of young heroes who love a goddess for a year, and foreknow their deaths” (p. 37). In other words, the Shore People treat their king primarily as the goddess or priestess’s consort, and kill him after just a year.
Marija Gimbutas has tried to make the case that the Shore People practiced a gentle, feminine, goddess-worshipping religion, and that they were cruelly exterminated by the warlike, sky-god worshipping evil Indo-Europeans. Renault is not going to paint with such a broad brush. Realistically, she shows both groups living next to one another and influencing each other. Also, throughout the course of the story, she is going to show by increasingly vivid illustrations that these two cultural systems are absolutely incompatible with each other. And that the mother-worship, in the end, is at least as bloody as the worship of Zeus.
Renault’s take on the story of Agamemnon is a great illustration of this. She interprets the story as a conflict between Clytemnestra’s mother-goddess culture and Agamemnon’s sky-father culture. When Clytemnestra brings back the “old religion,” it means that Agamemnon must die–not in battle, not some day, but now, and actually, yesterday. It means that Orestes is doubly cursed. He has loyalty to both religions, with their incompatible demands, and he is put at the mercy of the furies, the representatives of the goddess-religion. They chase him because he killed his mother, but if we string out the implications, even if he had not, they would probably be chasing him anyway. After all, he is a male heir to the throne, so his days are definitely numbered. Behold, the kindness of the religion of the goddess.
Obviously, there are some universal truths and some redemptive metaphors here, hidden under a thick layer of occultism, war between the sexes, and general pain and suffering for everyone. It is going to take a much greater King than Theseus to cut this difficult knot.
Seasonal Postscript
Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone! Such a romantic post, I realize.
Quote: Those June Weddings
Juno Regina was the queen of heaven, the protective genius of womanhood, marriage, and maternity; her month of June was recommended as the luckiest for weddings.
–Caesar and Christ, by Will Durant, p. 61
Behold, Three Books
Hunting Time, a Colter Shaw Novel, by Jeffery Deaver.
By the way, it’s “hunting TIME,” not “HUNTing time.” The sense is not “time to hunt,” but “we don’t just save time, we hunt it down.”
This is a very professional modern thriller and the author has tons of blurbs on the back from other modern thriller writers. The plot was intricate, the pacing tense, and the characters were distinctive enough to keep them straight and give some emotional momentum to the story. There was also at least one major twist that I did not see coming, and that I really thought was clever.
Possibly the best-drawn “character” is the Midwestern city of Ferrington, the picture of urban blight but without the glamour of a big coastal city. Ferrington used to be an industrial capital, but then many industries left the city, leaving people out of work. Now the place seems to be nothing but drugs, crime, and despair. There are lot of chain-link-fence-surrounded empty lots filled with trash, long streets full of abandoned warehouses, and there is a badly polluted river. The ugliness of the scenes described rises to the level of beauty. The cops are corrupt in some cases and spread too thin in others. I think the name Ferrington is supposed to remind us of Ferguson, Missouri, and this is where we start to get into the book’s flaws.
Though Deaver mostly sticks to the story, when laying his scenes he makes sure to get in occasional digs at the reader. Bigots are everywhere. Trans is good, gay is good. We capitalize Black but not white. Stuff like that. Oh, and of course, capitalists are the one who ruined Ferrington in the first place.
My other issue with this book is the female characters. They’re not terrible, but … but … well. They are just missing a certain je-ne-sais-quois. For example, one of the point of view characters is a woman, Allison Parker. Deaver uses third person limited with her and with Colter Shaw, the sleuth. When we are inside Allison’s point of view, he frequently calls her Parker. That is just a bit confusing. It makes it sound like there is another person in the room. I am pretty sure that most women don’t think of themselves by their last name. Although maybe men do. Which is really the problem: All Deaver’s “female” characters (he has three main ones in this book) think more like men. Allison Parker is an engineering genius, very organized, very no-nonsense. Her daughter Hannah is a math genius, also no-nonsense. Sonja Nilsson is a former military operative (you guessed it, no-nonsense!) who is willing to sleep with Shaw after having known him for a day or two.
This is not a problem with Deaver alone. Many, many female authors write “male” characters who think and talk like women. It’s just awfully difficult to get into the head of the opposite sex.
Finally, there are occasional little things that made me scratch my head. “Seahorses can be sensuous.” (They can?) “Five-high.” (It’s high-five.) Nilsson lost forty pounds, and kept it off, in order to go into witness protection. (Oh, I didn’t realize it was that easy. Especially since she left the military at the same time! But, as we all know, the only thing keeping fat people from losing weight is the want-to. Eye roll)
Due to all these little flaws, and because the reveal of the villain was less satisfying than I had hoped, I give this book three out of five stars.
Tomb of the Golden Bird, by Elizabeth Peters
This was pure fun.
The Emersons are a family of British Egyptologists. Emerson, “Father of Curses,” the paterfamilias, is married to Amelia Peabody, whom he calls “Peabody.” This hot couple began their Egyptian adventures back in the Victorian era, but now it is 1922. Their grown son, nicknamed Ramses, is married and has children, and the Emersons have a large, motley household of employees, longtime family friends, relatives, and adoptees, both Egyptian and British. They have returned to Luxor, Egypt, for yet another season of digging. Of course, there are going to be capers, skullduggery, and so forth, and all the Emersons will be involved up to their elbows. Will they be deceived by Emerson’s half-brother Sethos? Will they foil an international plot? Most importantly, will they ever get a peek into the intact tomb that was discovered–technically, by Emerson–and is now being opened by the odious Carter?
This series is exquisitely researched. About 60% of the story is told in the first person by Amelia Peabody, in near-perfect late Victorian/Edwardian language. Scattered everywhere are gems like this one:
… I identified several other [party] guests as journalists. I can always spot them by the bulges in their coat pockets which indicate the presence of notebooks, and by their predatory looks. Messieurs Bradstreet of the New York Times and Bancroft of the Daily Mail were known to me personally (through no fault of mine).
p. 241
The other 40% of the story is told in third person from the point of view of Ramses, who is a quieter character than his colorful parents, but it also includes gems:
He had thought of several innocent explanations for David’s behavior, including the one he had given. It was understandable that [David] might feel the need to be alone; the family en masse or individually could be wearing.
p. 254
I originally came to this series hoping for ancient Egyptian mystical mysteries. It’s not that. It’s more of a romp. Much of this book felt like following the Keystone Cops, but eventually there did turn out to be some twists that gave the whole plot shape and direction. Four out of five stars.
Matchingmaking for Psychopaths, by Tasha Coryell
I picked this up off the New Books shelf at the library. Perhaps I should have left it there, based on the title, but I had read the first few pages and found them engaging. Alas, I returned the book without finishing it. I would have liked there to be at least one main character who I was sure wasn’t a psychopath. A little psychopathology goes a long way.
When I returned the book, the librarian giggled and said, “Oh, that one was silly.” It was indeed silly. But silly and serial murder don’t mix well. At least not for me.
And there was also a daughter
And there was also a daughter.
She drops out of the story very early, sacrificed
for good winds on the way to Troy.
But her mother’s revenge has made history.
And there was also a daughter
cursed to foresee the destruction of the city,
as daughters often do,
and no one believed her.
And there was also a daughter,
kidnapped (seduced?) by Shechem,
avenged (destroyed?) by her brothers,
a single chapter in Genesis.
And there was also a prophet,
a man too young to know what women suffer–
yet He did, somehow.
Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.
Quote: A Silver Lining
[My mother’s] first bout of Lyme disease was diagnosed at the Bethesda Naval Hospital when a physician discovered three large bull’s-eye rashes on her behind. The physician was so excited at this classic presentation of Lyme that he called in several other handsome young navy doctors for a viewing. (My mother, somewhat of a flirt, loved telling this story.)
Bitten, by Kris Newby, p. 242
Quote: Women in Pubs
“Women,” Mart says with deep disapproval, appearing at Cal’s shoulder. “The pub’s full of women tonight.”
“They get everywhere,” Cal agrees gravely. “You reckon they should stay home and take care of the kids?”
“Ah, Jaysus, no. We’ve the twenty-first century here now. They’ve as much right to a night out as anyone. But they change the atmosphere of a place. You can’t deny that. Look at that, now.” Mart nods at the girl in the pink dress, who has started dancing with one of her girlfriends in a few square inches of space between the tables and the bar. “That’s disco behavior, that is. That’s what you get when there’s women in. They oughta have pubs of their own, so they can have their pint in peace without some potato-faced f-er trying to get into their knickers, and I can have mine without your man’s hormones getting in the air and spoiling the taste.”
“If they weren’t here,” Cal points out, “you’d be stuck looking at nothing better’n my hairy face for the evening.”
“True enough,” Mart concedes. “Some of the women in here tonight are a lot more scenic than yourself, no harm to you. Not all of them, but some.”
Tana French, The Hunter, pp. 120 – 121
When Did We Stop Marrying Our Siblings?
… and why do I care?
I might be in the process of drafting a book that takes place before the Flood. So that is forcing me to tackle this issue. Besides needing to get it settled in my own mind, this post is meant to test the waters and see how you, my readers, react to this concept. If I even bring it up, will I be kicked out of polite society?
So, this post is a historical survey of sister-marrying. And it starts in Egypt.
Royals did it
Marrying one’s sister, or half-sister, was not unheard of in the royal families of Ancient Near Eastern cultures. See the following two links for some hair-raising proof that it happened in ancient Egypt:
https://www.historyskills.com/classroom/ancient-history/egypt-brother-sister-marriage/
The practice of royal inbreeding continued so long in Egypt that, by the time we get to Tut-ankh-amen, he has a myriad of health problems and is rather strange-looking.
This was such an established part of married love, at least among royals, in the Ancient Near East that calling someone “my sister” became a conventional endearment. Here, for example, is Solomon:
You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride,
you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes,
with one jewel of your necklace.
Song of Solomon 4:9
And why did they do it? The obvious answer is to keep the royal bloodline pure. Most ANE cultures tended to believe that their royal family was descended from the gods (see my post Genetic Engineering in the Ancient World), and to add another layer to this, their myths about the gods also often featured sibling-marriage. Typically, you’d have gods and goddesses all being descended from the same being (Father Sky and Mother Earth, say), and then reproducing with each other to produce all the typically observed features of the cosmos. (Please, for the love of God, take my word for this and don’t read the Sumerian creation myths. I’m begging you–don’t!)
Speaking of Sumerians, here is an article that argues that Abram married his half-sister Sarai (whose name means princess) for the same reason: because their family was some kind of royalty in Mesopotamia before he left on his journey.
https://biblicalanthropology.blogspot.com/2011/03/sister-wives-and-cousin-wives.html
My question, however, is this. Did this practice of royals marrying their sisters represent breaking an established taboo for a “good” reason, or was it a case of carrying on a common practice a little longer than most people? My contention is that it’s the latter.
Let’s Go to Genesis
Genesis is, as I have often said, my favorite ancient history book. The more I study all of this, the more I realize that it is by far the most accurate written record we have of really ancient history, and of course it’s the only written record we have for some events that are, nevertheless, corroborated indirectly by archaeology, genetics, and historical traditions from around the world.
So, in Genesis, we have humanity starting out with one single couple. If we take this seriously, we have to conclude that the first generation would have had to marry their brothers and sisters, because there was nobody else around.
Nowadays, this would be an impossible genetic problem, besides being taboo. However, clearly it wasn’t taboo at the time. By producing families, people were obeying God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.” (Gen. 1:28) Based on the extremely long lifespans recorded in Genesis, we can infer that the newly created people were much healthier than we are, with a much more varied and robust genetic code. They would have had few diseases as yet, and almost no harmful mutations to inherit. Adam and Eve, who didn’t die until they were into their 900s, could have had literally a hundred or more children in that first generation. Furthermore, these children need not all have looked alike, except in the sense of being human. We have to remember that Adam and Eve had within them the potential to produce every genetic variation we see today (and actually more, since most of the variety was lost during the Flood).
By the time Cain kills Abel, there are enough people in the earth that Cain can complain, “I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” These other people that he is worried about would have been his siblings, nephews and nieces, grandnephews and -nieces, and so forth. If we figure that Seth was born not long after the murder of Abel, then the murder of Abel took place just under 130 years after the Fall. (Genesis 4:25 – 5:3) Apparently, that was enough time for the world to be populated.
In this video, starting at about 20:00, geneticist Nathaniel T. Jeansen discusses how our ancestors had to have been more closely related “than we are usually comfortable with.”
A Detour into Evolutionary Theory
“But wait!” you may say. “All this is nonsense. People didn’t all come from one founding couple, we evolved from several different but related species of hominids.”
Actually, if you think that way, you probably stopped reading this article before you got to this section. But let’s dip a toe into natural selection, just in case there is anyone hate-reading or any readers who are intrigued by what I’m saying about history, but are bothered by the science side of things.
Natural selection, in order to work as a mechanism, has to have a population of creatures already in place, with some genetic variation already in their genome. And–this is critical–they have to be already reproducing. That way, natural selection can operate on the subsequent generations of the population, encouraging variety here, stamping it out there, etc.
This creates a big problem if you want to argue that people evolved from (ultimately) one-celled animals. Now, how one-celled animals reproduce is itself a beautiful, complex mystery, but it’s basically by subdividing, producing clones of themselves. In other words, it’s not sexual reproduction.
How did sexual reproduction come about through natural selection? It would call for a wildly improbable series of (already vanishingly rare) beneficial mutations to the genetic code of two different creatures of the same species, such that one ended up male and one ended up female, with their systems perfectly corresponding to each other for reproduction. And it would have to work perfectly the first time.
If you want several different populations of human species, then you need this miracle to happen not once but several times, in different places. If it only happens once, then you’re back to what Genesis describes, which is just one founding couple.
What I’m saying is that introducing evolutionary theory doesn’t make the believability problem smaller, it makes it bigger.
Stephen Meyer explains why beneficial mutations are mathematically impossible.
Back to Genesis Again
We’ve established that in the pre-Flood world, there was no taboo on marrying one’s sibling (or probably, cousin or niece either), and also no health cost to doing so. Also (probably) it would not necessarily mean marrying someone you had grown up in close proximity with, given the size of the families we are talking about.
Then we get the Flood, in Genesis 6 – 9 and also attested in numerous local histories worldwide. At the Flood, the human population of the earth, previously vast in genetic diversity, gets culled down to just four couples, and the men of these couples are all related to each other. It’s from these four couples (perhaps just three of them?) that all of us today are descended. (We are literally just one big family!)
Think about the implications of this. The most distant relationship that any of Noah’s grandchildren would have had to each other would have been cousin during that first generation. Perhaps they married their cousins, and then their second cousins and so forth, but there is nothing to indicate that the possibility of marrying siblings had been closed to them. In Gen. 9:1 -17, God makes a new covenant with Noah and his sons. He reiterates the command to increase in number and fill the earth. He gives them the animals to eat, institutes the death penalty for murder of humans, and promises never to send another worldwide flood. He does not mention any new rules about not marrying your sister.
Next, in Genesis 11 and 10 respectively, we get the Tower of Babel and the Table of Nations. Though the Table of Nations comes before the account of Babel, the fact that we are told which geographical areas these nations settled in hints that the Table of Nations is at least a partial elaboration of where people went when “the LORD scattered them over the face of the earth.”
In the Table of Nations, the peoples are sorted by father. We see the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japeth listed by a paternal line, and we see them scattering to found cities, kingdoms, and peoples. This implies, though it does not directly say, that they were having a lot of children per family, and that they were practicing in-group marriage.
Now we get to Abram, who was a Sumerian basically, or was living in that region of the world and in that culture area. As has been covered, he married his half-sister Sarai, whether because theirs was an aristocratic family or because it was still common practice in Mesopotamia at the time. Later, on two separate occasions (Gen. 12:10 – 20 and 20:1 – 18), he “lies” by telling a local ruler that Sarai is his sister. On both occasions, the local king understands this to mean that Sarai is not Abram’s wife and is fair game for his harem. This shows that, probably, most wives were not sisters at the time, at least in Egypt (Gen. 12) and southern Palestine (Gen. 20).
This would be about 2,000 B.C.
In Genesis 24, Abraham asks his servant to get a wife for Isaac from among “my own relatives.” The servant, guided by the LORD (!), finds Rebekah, the daughter of Abraham’s niece (Gen. 24:15). One generation later, Rebekah herself encourages Jacob to marry one of his cousins, daughters of her brother Laban. So by this time, we are practicing in-group marriage, but with cousins, not siblings.
Some groups still do this. See my post on The Iroquois Kinship System.
Finally, A Taboo in Leviticus 18!
Finally, in Leviticus 18, we get an explicit prohibition on marrying your sister.
Leviticus comprises the details of the giving of the Law, right after the exodus from Egypt, so about 1400 B.C. If you plop your finger onto Leviticus, it looks really early in the Bible. However, it’s 600 years after Abraham and a couple of thousand years after the Flood, so it is coming rather late from this blog’s perspective on ancient history.
The intended recipients of Leviticus are a large population of tribes who have just spent 400 years becoming culturally Egyptian. Since Moses’ parents were both from the tribe of Levi (Exodus 2:1), we can infer that they are still practicing in-group marriage.
Leviticus chapter 18 begins this way:
The LORD said to Moses: “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘I am the LORD your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees. I am the LORD your God. Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live [i.e. find life] by them. I am the LORD.
“No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the LORD.”
Lev. 18:1 – 6
There follows a very comprehensive list of close relatives who are off-limits. This list includes everything you can think of, and some things that you perhaps haven’t. It ranges from very sick perversions, to this:
“‘Do not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether she was born in the same home or elsewhere. (v. 9)
“‘Do not take your wife’s sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living.'” (v. 17)
Verse 9 gives us a clue of what types of family arrangements were possible among the Israelites of 1400 B.C. You might have a half-sister who was raised in a separate household. Verse 17 describes a behavior that Jacob famously engaged in with Rachael and Leah (additionally, both women were his cousins). In fact, the two women’s rivalry was how we got the twelve tribes of Israel. Marrying two sisters at the same time (not to mention their respective maidservants) was apparently something that was normal in the age of the patriarchs, but now, giving the Law 600 years later, God forbids it.
Leviticus 18:24 – 29 makes it clear that “all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you,” but God considers them to be things that defile a land. I gather that this means the wide variety of disordered sexual relationships described in Leviticus 18 were not unheard-of, probably not just among the Egyptians and Canaanites, but among many or all of the many tribes in the surrounding areas.
We have God to thank for this taboo
So, now we know approximately when marrying your sister became taboo. 1400 B.C. And people didn’t come up with this on their own; God had to enforce it.
The overall picture is one where we start off with is marriages taking place among close family, in sort of a wholesome way, before and immediately after the Flood. Then, instead of branching out and marrying more and more distantly related people as the earth’s population increases, we see cultures in the Ancient Near East curving back in on themselves and coming up with more and more perverse ways to approach this. I gather from Lev. 18 that, once an ANE man had bagged a wife, he seemed to feel entitled, or at least have an eye out for the opportunity, for sexual rights to everyone related to her.
The time of the Israelite patriarchs, enslavement in Egypt, and Exodus also overlaps with the Minoan civilization on Crete, which gave us the legend (?) of the Minotaur, the offspring (allegedly) of Queen Pasiphae and a white bull. That gives us a clue that such horrifying practices were not confined to the Levant. “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how that nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled.”
Quote: Talking to Women
“What would you be talking about, the two of ye?” he asks.
The question startles Cal. “Like what?”
“That’s what I’m asking you. One way or t’other, I’ve never had much opportunity for conversation with women … What would a man be talking about with a woman?”
“Jeez, man,” Cal says. “I dunno.”
“I’m not asking you what sweet nothings you go whispering in her ear. I’m asking about conversation. What kind chats you’d be having over a cuppa tea, like.”
“Stuff,” says Cal. “Like I’d talk about with anyone. What do you talk about with the guys in the pub?”
“Stuff,” Mart acknowledges. “Fair point there, bucko.”
Tana French, The Hunter, p. 241
Out of Babel Books 
