Ancient Egyptian Weddings

So far I've written three Egyptian weddings in two books. And there's more to come. After all, I'm writing about royal women, those who were used as pawns to solidify claims to the throne and sometimes political alliances. So it's kind of inevitable.

Modern Western society makes a big to-do about weddings with the happy couple often going into debt to put on the perfect ceremony and reception, but I think the ancient Egyptians may have had the right idea. In ancient Egypt, a woman was considered married as soon as she moved into her husband's house. There are no records of any sort of ceremony, any documents that had to be signed. You shack up together and viola! You're married!

There's also a fair amount of love poetry that exists from ancient Egypt, some rather suggestive. Those Egyptians were no Puritans (even though Matt informed us via Bane's blog that those Puritans were far from saintly). An example, one that's PG-13ish:

My lover is a lotus blossom
with pomegranate breasts;
her face is a polished wooden snare.

And I am the poor bird
seduced
into the teeth of her trap.

There are also many poems using the words brother and sister as terms of endearment. These don't mean sibling in the literal sense as it was really only the royal family that intermarried. It's important to keep the crown in the family, you know.

This is one of those examples where I've had to stretch history a little. It's hard to write a wedding scene, especially one between two royal siblings, without elaborating a little. I think modern audiences expect a gala event. So I've added some symbolic actions in the wedding, but tried to focus mostly on the parties that would have followed. Normally I'm a stickler when it comes to history, but embellishing on fact in this instance only makes a better story. And if the scenes are mostly about the parties, I figure the ancient Egyptians won't mind. After all, their lives were short and they certainly knew how to party!