A Review of Incestuous and Close-Kin Marriage in Ancient Egypt and Persia

Document Type : Book Review

Author

Department of history, faculty of human sciences, university of Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The subject of incestuous marriage has been one of the most controversial issues and debates in Iranian history. Not many historians have paid attention to this matter and it seems that even studying this topic is taboo, especially among Iranian scholars. On the other hand, the problem has gotten more complicated since the Islamic revolution, as some zealous islamists use this to humiliate the pre-Islamic history of Iran. Subsequently, Iranian nationalists and patriots have denied the existence of any incest in ancient Persia. In such a political environment, very few Iranian scholars have come up with valuable historical research, free of any prejudices. Yet their research is still scant compared to their Western colleagues. That is why Paul John Frandsen’s Incestuous and Close-Kin Marriage in Ancient Egypt and Persia should be taken seriously, as it evaluates many previous opinions about incest in ancient Iran with a critical approach, highlights their flaws, adopts a new method, and proposes new hypotheses.  As the name of the book suggests, this work is about ancient Persia (Iran) and Egypt and explains that no direct link can be seen between incestuous marriage in these two ancient civilizations. This review concerns the part of the book dealing with Persia.

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🔓 © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Tissaphernes Archaeological Research Group, Tehran, Iran. Open Access. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The ethical policy of Ancient Iranian Studies is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and complies with International Committee of Ancient Iranian Studies Editorial Board codes of conduct. Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with Ancient Iranian Studies. The ethical policy of Ancient Iranian Studies is liable to determine which of the typical research papers or articles submitted to the journal should be published in the concerned issue. For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit www.publicationethics.org.

References

Daryaee, Touraj. (2013). “Marriage Property and Conversion among the Zoroastrians: From Late Sasanian to Islamic Iran”. Journal of Persianate Studies Vol. 6 Issue 1-2. Brill. 91-100.
Herodotus. (1920). Histories. English translation by A.D. Godley, Herodotus (In Four Volumes), America and Great Britain: The Loeb Classical Library.
Shahbazi, A. SH. (2001). “Afsāneh ezdevāj bā mahārem dar Irān e bāstān”. Iranian Journal of Archaeology and History, Vol. 15, No. 1 & 2. Iran University Press. 9-28 (In Persian).
Strabo. Geography. (1917). Volume VII: Books 15-16. Translated by Horace Leonard Jones. Loeb Classical Library 49. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
West, E.W. (1882). “The Meaning of Khvētūk or Khvēyūdād-das”. Pahlavi Texts II. Oxford. 389-430. 
Ancient Iranian studies
Volume 3, Issue 8 - Serial Number 8
January 2024
Pages 89-93

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History

  • Receive Date: 10 September 2023
  • Revise Date: 03 October 2023
  • Accept Date: 08 November 2023

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