 
...Revel in pleasure while your life endures
And deck your head with myrrh. Be richly clad
In white and perfumed linen; like the gods
Anointed be; and never weary grow
In eager quest of what your heard desires -
Do as it prompts you...
-- Lay of the Harpist
Sexuality in ancient Egypt was open, untainted by guilt. Sex was
an important part of life - from birth to death and rebirth.
Singles and married couples made love. The gods themselves were
earthy enough to copulate. The Egyptians even believed in sex in
the afterlife. Sex was not taboo... Even the Egyptian religion was
filled with tales of adultery, incest, homosexuality and
masturbation... with hints of necrophillia! Masculinity and
femininity itself were strongly linked with the ability to
conceive and bear children...
Marriage
To the ancient Egyptians, the most attractive women tended to be
the fertile ones. A woman who had children was seen to be more
fortunate than ones without. Taking after Isis,
the mother goddess of
Horus, Egyptian women strove to be
intelligent, wise, mystical and mothers. Where her twin sister Nephthys
was barren, Isis
was fertile.
In the Egyptian community, men had to prove their masculinity by
fathering children, while the women had to be able to bear these
sons and daughters. Being a mother meant being able to keep her
marriage secure and to gain a better position in society.
But an Egyptian family was not just a status symbol - the
Egyptians loved their children and were not afraid to show it. But
there were some advice to parents, written by scribes:
Do not prefer one of your children above the others; after all,
you never know which one of them will be kind to you.
Adultery in Egypt was wrong. Women got the worst punishment for
adultery - a man might just be forced into a divorce, but a woman
could conceivably be killed for that crime. In the Tale of Two
Brothers, the adulterous wife was found out, murdered and her body
was thrown to the dogs.
Unmarried women, on the other hand, seem to be free to choose
partners as they so desire, and enjoy their love life to its
fullest.
Prostitutes advertised themselves through their clothing and make
up. Some prostitutes wore blue faience beaded fish-net dresses,
some of which is kept in the Weingreen Museum of Biblical
Archaeology in Dublin. They painted their lips red, and tattooed
themselves on the breasts or thighs and even went around totally
nude.
Contraception
 The
Egyptians had their own ways and means of getting around the fact
that sex produced children. They had both contraceptives and
abortions, mostly these were prescriptions that were filled with
unpleasant ingredients such as crocodile dung. Here is one of the
nicer ones:
Prescription to make a woman cease to become pregnant for one, two
or three years: Grind together finely a measure of acacia dates
with some honey. Moisten seed-wool with the mixture and insert it
in the vagina.
-- Ebers Medical Papyrus
Incest
From the close family relationships in Egyptian mythology and the
fact that Egyptians seemed to have no taboo against incest, many
have concluded that incest was rife in ancient Egypt.
There were probably some brother and sister marriages, but more
likely than not, the siblings in question would have been
half-brothers and half-sisters. The problem arises from the
limited Egyptian terms of kinship, which are very confusing. A
'father' could refer to the actual father, the grandfather or male
ancestors, while 'mother' could be the same, but for the females
of the family. 'Sister' could mean a lover, a wife, a mistress or
concubine, niece or aunt!
The royal family, on the other hand, did have more incestuous
marriages. The royal blood ran through the females, not the males.
To become pharaoh, a man had to marry a royal princess... which
would be his sister or half-sister.
The prevalence of brother-sister marriages within the New Kingdom
royal family, a custom in obvious contrast to contemporary
non-royal marriage patters, appears to have been an attempt to
reinforce the links between the royal family and the gods who
themselves frequently indulged in brother-sister unions.
Ra
Even the gods had sex in ancient Egypt. Ra (in the form of Atum)
masturbated his children Shu and
Tefnut into existence!
Atum
is he who masturbated in On. He took his phallus in his grasp
that he might create orgasm by means of it, and so were born the
twins Shu and
Tefnut.
-- Pyramid Text 1248-49
Nut and Geb
 Nut, the goddess of the night sky, and her brother
Geb, the god of
the earth, were originally thought to be in a constant state of
love making. Ra grew angry with his grandchildren, and commanded
their father Shu
to separate the two lovers. The god of the air
took his place, and trampled on the ithyphallic Geb, and lifted
Nut high into the air.
Nut was found to be pregnant, and was then
cursed by Ra - she would never be able to bear her children on any
month of the 360 day year. Thoth managed
to win a game against Khonsu, god of the moon, and used some of
the light of the moon to create five extra days (making the year
365 days). During those days
Nut gave birth to her five children - Isis,
Osiris,
Nephthys,
Set and
Horus the Elder (not to be confused with
Horus, the child
of Isis
and Osiris).
Nephthys
and Osiris
Some tales of sex and the Egyptian gods is on the seamier side -
one of the reasons given as to why Set
and Osiris hate each other
was because of Nephthys,
Set's
sister-wife. She was barren (she represented the desert, as did Set), and she hit on the plan of disguising herself as
Isis and seducing
Osiris. Getting
Osiris drunk,
Nephthys
took Osiris
to her bed, and the two had drunken sex together. Osiris
dropped his garland of melilot flowers in the act of
passion. Set
found the adulterous goddess and the flowers, and
knowing who the flowers belonged to, he began to plan Osiris'
death. The child of this union was thought to be Anubis, god of
mummification. 
Now as the overflowings of the Nile are sometimes very great, and
extend to the boundaries of the land, this gave rise to the story
of the secret intercourse between Osiris
and Nephthys,
as the natural consequence of so great an inundation would be the
springing up of plants in those parts of the country which were
formerly barren.
Isis
and Osiris
After his first attempt, Set managed to kill Osiris
again and cut
up his body into numerous parts. These parts Set
spread all over
Egypt. Isis,
Nephthys
and Anubis searched Egypt, and managed to retrieve all of the
pieces of the body, except one - Osiris' phallus.
Set had dropped
the penis into the Nile (making it fertile), where it was eaten by
a fish. The god and goddesses pieced Osiris
together and created
the first mummy. Using her magic, Isis
fashioned a replacement for Osiris' missing part, either out of
clay, wood or gold, and attached this to her dead husband's body.
Through magical spells, life was breathed back into Osiris' body
(though some dispute this and believe that Osiris
was dead at the
time)... The goddess managed to share a time of passion with her
husband who impregnating her with their child,
Horus. Osiris
then
passed into the afterlife, becoming god of the dead.
Horus and
Set
After Osiris' eventual death, while
Horus was growing up and
planning his own revenge, Set and
Horus engaged in a homosexual
relationship. In one part of the myth, Set
proclaimed to
Horus,
"How lovely your backside is." Informing his mother Isis
about his uncle's ardour,
Horus is told to catch Set's semen
rather than becoming impregnated by the murderer of his father. Set, in doing so, was planning on humiliating
Horus by showing the
gods that
Horus would be filled with someone else's semen.
Horus and Isis's next plan was to
'impregnate' Set
with
Horus' semen. His mother spreads powerful
unguents on
Horus' penis, after which he ejaculated into a jar,
and they spread it on some lettuce, a favourite aphrodisiac to the
ancient Egyptians. Set
then eats the semen-covered lettuce, and so
Horus (rather than Set
with his first 'attack') becomes sexually
dominant over his uncle. Set
then asked the gods to bring the
semen forth from the 'impregnated' one, to humiliate Osiris' son.
The semen comes out of Set
himself, and he becomes the laughing
stock of the gods!
Hapi
The Egyptian god if the Nile,
Hapi, was a masculine deity, given
female properties because of the fertility of the Nile river.
Without the Nile, there would be no Egypt. Due to the duality of
Egyptian thought, there were two
Hapi gods - one of Upper Egypt
wearing the lotus on his head, and one of Lower Egypt wearing
papyrus. He was usually depicted as a blue or green coloured man
with a protuding belly, carrying libation jugs. He also has full
breasts, indicating his ability to nourish Egypt. Despite being a
hermaphrodite god, both
Hapis were given wives - Nekhebet in Upper
Egypt and Uatchet in Lower Egypt.
Min
Lettuce was thought to be the favourite food of the fertility god,
Min. He was depicted as a god with an erect penis, wearing a
feathered crown and carrying a flail. Lettuce was his sacred
plant, and an aphrodisiac to the ancient Egyptians - this
particular species of lettuce was tall, straight and secreted a
milky substance when pressed!
Another aphrodisiac was the onion. They were forbidden to the
priests who had vowed celibacy, for fear that their passion might
take over, and that they might desecrate themselves!
Fennel, ginger, pomegranates, coriander in wine and radishes mixed
with honey were thought to have aphrodisiac qualities, too.
The Lotus was also a symbol of sexuality, as well as immortality
and health. It was possibly even a narcotic that the Egyptians
used, but it was more likely to be a sexual stimulant.
Some of the more unusual aphrodisiacs included pearls dissolved in
a cup of wine, baboon faces added to aphrodisiac ointments!
Artwork
The Turin Papyrus contains various pictures of sexual activity,
perhaps focused on Ramses II and his many wives, or maybe
depicting an ancient Egyptian brothel. It has been theorised that,
more likely, it is just the fantasies of an ancient Egyptian who
happened to sketch them out on papyrus. Most of the positions
drawn on this papyrus seem to be rather uncomfortable!
Another sexual sketch - this time graffiti - from ancient Egypt
shows a woman with a pharaoh's crown, maybe Hatshepsut
engaging in sex with a male that many presume to be Senmut. This
sketch has caused many people to believe that Hatshepsut
and her favourite courtier were lovers.
From various sources, it seems that the Egyptian preferred method
of intercourse were face-to-face or from behind.
After Life
The Egyptians thought of their afterlives as more of a
continuation of life on earth (albeit a better life). This being
the case, the Egyptians believed in sex life after death!
Egyptian men had false penises attached to their mummies while
Egyptian women had artificial nipples attached. Both would become
fully functional in the afterlife, where they were free to engage
in sexual intercourse, if they so desired.
There were even fertility dolls in many graves - women with wide,
child-bearing hips that were often carrying children in their
arms. Other fertility dolls, known as paddle dolls, don't have any
legs, and their bodies end in very wide pubic area, with tiny
heads and arms.
These dolls show that the Egyptians believed that fertility and
sex were interlinked, though the ancient Egyptians quite clearly
enjoyed sex in its own right!
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