Note 2108 — Chapter XI
Reading edition
An example is the Old-Hebrew usage respecting marriage with a half-sister or with a wife (not one's mother) of a father. Up to about the seventh century B.C. such marriages were lawful (Gen. xx, 12; 2 Sam. xiii, 13; xvi, 22); later they were forbidden (Ezek. xxii, 10 f.; Lev. xviii, 11). Maspero (in the Annuaire de l'école des hautes études, 1896) points out that in Egypt marriage between uterine brothers and sisters in the royal family was not only legal but a sacred duty, its object being to maintain the purity of the divine blood.