Private Lives and Public Censure: Adultery in Ancient Egypt and Biblical Israel

Abstract

In biblical Israel, the traditional view was that adultery was a violation of the covenant between the people and their god. The fact that there is no official code of law from ancient Egypt has generally not facilitated direct comparisons of this culture with biblical Israel. Also, because the severity of punishment in Egypt for adultery was generally far less than that suggested by the legal codes of Babylon or biblical Israel, the assumption has always been that adulterous behavior was not publicly censured. Egyptian documents, however, clearly indicate that the act was regarded as a moral failing and a source of community discord. In that way, the perceptions of adultery known from ancient Egyptian literature parallel the attitudes represented in biblical passages dealing with adultery more than has been heretofore suggested. The treatment of specific cases relating to the consequences of adultery in ancient Egypt, over a period of several centuries, are examined in this article in order to shed light on some of the similarities noted to the biblical traditions.