WI: No Incest Among Pharaohs

In Ancient Egypt, it was a common and accepted practice for pharaohs to marry their blood relatives and have children with them. Tutankhamun was the son of the "monotheistic pharaoh" Akhenaten and one of his full siblings, and he married his half-sister Ankhesenamun. Ramesses II married four of his own daughters. This practice continued under the Ptolemaic dynasty.

But what if the pharaohs didn't do this? What would be different?
 
Why wouldn't they? They are emulating the divine union between Osiris and Isis; and Pharaoh claims to be Osiris reincarnated. It is not something you can just throw away because of modern sensibilities; that emulation is a core component to the very identity of the office.
 
You would need very different Egyptian culture before pharaohs would abandon incest totally. They practised that because them had keep their "divine blood" pure. They were gods who couldn't marry and breed with common people not even with nobles because them had maintain their god status. And many gods too practised incest.
 
You would need very different Egyptian culture before pharaohs would abandon incest totally. They practised that because them had keep their "divine blood" pure. They were gods who couldn't marry and breed with common people not even with nobles because them had maintain their god status. And many gods too practised incest.
Maby they married isetusly but whith concubines that actually produced the heir?
 
To do this you'd need Horus to be explicitly said to have had loads of children, along with the royal bloodline being started by his firstborn son without any of his sisters' help. This way royal incest would end up being seen as acceptable but optional, as even the gods didn't practice it consistently, and the number of unrelated potential marriage partners for pharaohs would increase, as there would be other equally viable sources of divine blood within the kingdom.

Total rejection of incest would probably start to come about when its effects were noticed in the royal children whose family tree had the least branches.
 
Why wouldn't they? They are emulating the divine union between Osiris and Isis; and Pharaoh claims to be Osiris reincarnated. It is not something you can just throw away because of modern sensibilities; that emulation is a core component to the very identity of the office.

It's not just "modern sensibilities": pretty much ever society has had an incest taboo.
 
A very different line of Pharaohs, leading to unpredictable divergences in history. But like what has been said before, you would need a fundamental change in Egyptian culture, starting with their view of their gods.
 
You would have to make it so that property rights could not descend down the female side of the family line. That affects the decision to keep it in the family as much or more than the religious issues do, because if a woman carries the right to inherit, letting her marry anyone outside the family is a complication her brother the pharaoh does not need.
 
It's not just "modern sensibilities": pretty much ever society has had an incest taboo.
Westermarck effect is easily bypassed. Just raise the brother and sister in different homes/sections.

By the way, some cultures had Westermarck effect occuring between non-blood-related boys and girls. IIRC Mao Zedong was an example - his first wife was adopted by his family when she was a baby and they spent a few years as brother and sister before being forcibly married, so yeah.
 
Without incest, and thus inbreeding, it's highly likely there would have been no Pharaoh Akhenaton as such, since his alternate self wouldn't have been born plagued by the Marfan syndrome, one of the symptoms of which is held responsible for him falling down the rabbit hole of solar monotheism.
 
Without incest, and thus inbreeding, it's highly likely there would have been no Pharaoh Akhenaton as such, since his alternate self wouldn't have been born plagued by the Marfan syndrome, one of the symptoms of which is held responsible for him falling down the rabbit hole of solar monotheism.
Akhenaton was truly one of the less imbreeded members of his family as neither his mother or grandmother (and in the majority of the generation before them) were (half-)sisters of their husbands so is pretty unlikely who a different conception of weddings would have changed much for him
 
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Akhenaton was truly one of the less imbreeded members of his family as neither his mother or grandmother (and in the majority of the generation before them) were (half-)sisters of their husbands so is pretty unlikely who a different conception of weddings would have changed much for him
In his case it wasn't the level of immediate inbreeding that was the problem, but the fact the Marfan syndrome is congenital. If incest had fallen out of favor in the royal line as I postulated in my first comment, then the odds of the disease popping up decrease exponentially.
 

Marc

Donor
There has been some consideration that incestuous marriages among the Pharaohs may have been much more symbolic than actual.
Now avuncular marriages (marrying a niece/nephew), which in modern times we would think as being incest, was very acceptable in many societies well into antiquity and beyond. One of the most famous of the Byzantine emperors, Heraclius, married his teenage niece in the 7th century.
 
There has been some consideration that incestuous marriages among the Pharaohs may have been much more symbolic than actual.
Now avuncular marriages (marrying a niece/nephew), which in modern times we would think as being incest, was very acceptable in many societies well into antiquity and beyond. One of the most famous of the Byzantine emperors, Heraclius, married his teenage niece in the 7th century.

And probably even more famous are Spanish Habsburgs. It wasn't very good idea.
 
There has been some consideration that incestuous marriages among the Pharaohs may have been much more symbolic than actual.
Now avuncular marriages (marrying a niece/nephew), which in modern times we would think as being incest, was very acceptable in many societies well into antiquity and beyond. One of the most famous of the Byzantine emperors, Heraclius, married his teenage niece in the 7th century.

We know Ramesses II married his daughters, and at least one,Great Wife Bintanath had a daughter of her own, presumably her father/husband’s offspring.
 
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