Sexuality in Ancient Egypt – History Archives

The collective imagination places ancient Egypt as a magical, mysterious and aphrodisiac place where the powerful surrounded themselves with naked servants, or with light and subtle clothes that hardly left anything to the imagination, who offered their lord pleasures and entertainment. We already told you about his funerary world, but now let’s go to sexuality.

But was Egyptian sexuality really so basic and brash? Was it a wild bacchanal where everyone lay with everyone? Reality is very different from fiction and ancient archaeologists have told us about Ancient Egypt and the love life of its inhabitants.

To begin with, I want to warn that studies on sexuality, eroticism and Egyptian marriage are quite complex to carry out because of the few material remains that speak of the sexual customs of Egypt. Many of these components of studies have never reached us due to the unstoppable passage of time or because ancient archaeologists of the last and nineteenth centuries, embarrassed by these discoveries, hid them from the public or even destroyed these writings or engravings. It is possible that even today they are lost in some museum warehouse or in the private collection of some big shot.

Although we must not forget that Ancient Egypt covers more than three thousand years of history, where dozens of different peoples have coexisted and developed.

Egypt has always been a firmly religious place, in ancient times the gods and their myths were the center of their lives, they imitated them, learned from them and entrusted themselves to them.

It is not surprising then, that sex was also represented through its deities. Many of the myths that have come down to us speak explicitly of intercourse, for example the creation of the world that was granted by the sun god Atum-Ra who created himself from nothing and in the absence of a woman with whom to procreate. , decided to masturbate and spilled his semen on the ground, which he collected with his mouth, thus simulating the feminine part of the act, he spit out his two sons Shu, god of light, and Tefnut, goddess of moisture, already fully formed. As soon as they were expelled, they came together naturally and engendered Nut, the vault of heaven, and Geb, god of the earth. As can be seen, the myth of genesis is already purely sexual and accepts masturbation as something normal and semen symbolizes the seed that germinated and gave rise to the beginning of life.

So much so that there is a myth that even makes us understand that necrophilia existed as a common practice, or at least it was a practice that existed. The most famous myth of Egypt, the story of Isis and her husband Osiris, tells us precisely about this. The god-king, Osiris, after being killed, chopped up and thrown into the Nile by his brother Seth, was recovered and rebuilt by his wife Isis, but since she was unable to find his member, he placed a replica on his mummy with which she copulated, transformed into a kite.

It seems that at the time of embalming, many of the priests took the opportunity to have sex with the corpse, especially if it was women, that is why in many embalmings it was customary to put a “guard” who watched the body at all times. Some families, especially if the deceased was a young person, used to keep the body at home for a few days so that the putrefaction prevented the body from being sullied.

Another divinity that we relate to eroticism and sexuality is Hathor, goddess of womanyou are, from the ffertility, of love, the toegrity, the borsstreaks, beauty and enjoyment I knowxual, I want to point out that for the Egyptians pleasure and fertility were intimately related and they were not capable of imagining one thing without the other. But that they were united does not mean that they did not know contraceptive systems, an issue that I will address later.
Of Hathor, also known as the “hand of God”, numerous female figurines have been found that have a very marked pubic triangle.

In contrast we have Min, god of male sexuality and son or husband of Hathor, who represented the sexual potency of man and who was entrusted with the sexual potency of the new king and was asked to give birth to the future heir. He was usually depicted with his erect member grasped in his left hand while raising the other. QI want to point out that in Egypt there was a marked cult of the phallus, you can find many statuettes, papyri and engravings in which gods and different characters are represented with huge phalluses, larger than themselves, ready to impregnate their wives.

The only treatise showing explicit sex is the Turin papyrus, which shows a man and a woman having sexual intercourse. It was drawn as if it were a current comic. The author tried to represent in different correlative scenes, all the actions carried out by the protagonists.

They had a very natural conception of the human body and sex, unlike other contemporary and later cultures. The weather also helped to lose inhibitions, so much so that there are even papyrus drawings of the time that show couples frolicking while their relatives are around them, taking what was happening in front of them as something natural. With this I do not mean that the Egyptians sought public intercourse and were exhibitionists, but possibly due to the lack of space in their homes and being shared, it would be normal if they did not have a place for sexual intimacy.

In Egypt, as I said before, nudity was normal but it did not cool the attraction to the human body, that is, what we are sexually attracted to today does not differ much, broadly speaking, from ancient Egypt. By this I mean that, for example, female breasts attracted in the same way that they can attract us today. Even though a woman didn’t cover up and even adorned her breasts to make them more conspicuous, it was part of her own desire. The decorations ranged from the wealthiest who wore jewels and beads to the poorest who could only paint their nipples in some striking color. For example, for the Egyptians the sexual charge and the one that provoked the man’s carnal desire for him were none other than women. Several wisdom treatises of the time warn men about women, to be vigilant, not to fall for her provocations.

A custom that many Egyptians did, which had a religious aspect rather than a sexual or medical one, was circumcision. When a boy reached adulthood he was circumcised by a priest. Although it was not practical for the entire Egyptian population to do so, it was something common and even many archaeologists believe that it was a stage that a child had to overcome if he wanted to move on to adulthood. They repudiated foreign peoples who did not practice circumcision and considered them dirty, for this reason it is believed that it was perhaps a medical practice as well as a religious one.

The filias and the fetishes was something normal and fell within the tastes that each Egyptian could have. For example the fellatio and the cunnilingus it was not something that was socially rejected. In the same way that incest was something normal, not so much in the old or middle empire, as in the new empire or in the Ptolemaic era.
Even zoophilia was not frowned upon and having sex with some animals was believed to bring benefits or blessings to those who practiced it.

The nuclear family, that is, father, mother and children, was the center of life in ancient Egypt, so much so that there were no names to name members outside of them, the grandfather was called the father or the uncle. Children were considered a blessing, the Egyptians wanted to have as many children as possible, something normal, considering that life expectancy did not exceed thirty years and that it was common for many children to die before reaching adulthood. But that they sought to have descendants as something normal, did not imply that a couple always wanted to have children or that certain sexual relations were for that purpose. It is known that the Egyptians knew various contraceptive methods, some of a dubious nature.

The most common practices to prevent pregnancy were coitus interruptus, douching after intercourse, anal sex, it seems that there was some blocking system made from linen that was inserted into the vagina and later extracted with tweezers. The most dubious but scientifically based method was the use of authi, a polvo obtained from the stems of a plant parecgo to tree of rubber what era andmpled in a formula chen less strange, since sand mixed with excrelementcrocodileilo and it was given a cylindrical shape to be able to be introducedfor himto vagina beforeis from coitus, the factsit is modifyarian the acidity of the girlvaginal discharge, which could acabar with the it isbutmatozoids.

Yes, despite everything, these methods did not work, on some occasions they used abortion. But given the importance of the new life in ancient Egypt, it must have been a rare practice, although it seems that it was socially accepted. Many treaties, such as the papyrusor Ebers recommend crush acanthus fruits,datiles and cebuns, mix that paste con honey and spread it on a cloth appicaria in the woman’s vulva. In theory, this paste allowed women to abort.

As the union of two people was so important to Egyptian society, infidelity was considered unforgivable and was grounds for immediate divorce and judges could severely punish the unfaithful. Although normally the one who was blamed the most was the woman for having seduced the man, even leading to death sentences.

It was common for women to marry as soon as they entered puberty, while men used to marry in their twenties. Although there is no evidence that marriages of convenience existed, it is possible that the sons and daughters felt influenced in some way by their parents to choose a spouse. It seems that virginity was not something important for the couple either and it was common for all married people to have previously had extramarital sex, with each other or with other people.

But despite being such an important act, the union of spouses became effective simply when two people began to live together under the same roof. They did not celebrate a buoyant ceremony, on the contrary it was quite simple, the only thing they had to agree on was the goods that each one contributed to the family. In the event that one of the two wanted to separate, these assets were returned to him and as for divorce, it did not matter if the divorcee was a woman or a man, in this case the laws were quite egalitarian.

Homosexuality does not seem to have been repudiated or at least an act that had to be hidden, but make no mistake, it was not something normalized and accepted as it was in ancient Greece. Although it was not frowned upon for two people of the same sex to have relationships, it was something to be avoided if one wanted to go to the afterlife. But surely the one who should have…