Several of the Egyptian kings married their sisters and had several children with them to continue the royal bloodline. For example, Tutankhamun married his half-sister Ankhesenamun, and was himself the child of an incestuous union between Akhenaten and an unidentified sister-wife. Several scholars, such as Frier et al., state that sibling marriages were widespread among all classes in Egypt during the Graeco-Roman period. Numerous papyri and the Roman census declarations attest to many husbands and wives being brother and sister, of the same father and mother. However, it has also been argued that the available evidence does not support the view that such relations were common.Walter Scheidel. 2004. "Ancient Egyptian Sibling Marriage and the Westermarck Effect", in Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo: the state of knowledge at the turn of the century Arthur Wolf and William Durham (eds) Stanford University Press. pp. 93–108Huebner, Sabine R. The family in Roman Egypt: a comparative approach to intergenerational solidarity and conflict. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Several of the Egyptian kings married their sisters and had several children with them to continue the royal bloodline. For example, Tutankhamun married his half-sister Ankhesenamun, and was himself the child of an incestuous union between Akhenaten and an unidentified sister-wife. Several scholars, such as Frier et al., state that sibling marriages were widespread among all classes in Egypt during the Graeco-Roman period. Numerous papyri and the Roman census declarations attest to many husbands and wives being brother and sister, of the same father and mother. However, it has also been argued that the available evidence does not support the view that such relations were common.Walter Scheidel. 2004. "Ancient Egyptian Sibling Marriage and the Westermarck Effect", in Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo: the state of knowledge at the turn of the century Arthur Wolf and William Durham (eds) Stanford University Press. pp 93–108Huebner, Sabine R. The family in Roman Egypt: a comparative approach to intergenerational solidarity and conflict. Cambridge University Press, 2013.