Claudius F. Mayer: From Plato to Pope Paul / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 17. (Budapest, 1989)
out, they would act as the most potent check on population increase. This religion enjoins the strictest celibacy on its sacerdotal class. 8 0 CONFUCIUS 8 1 was already concerned about the law population in China. He taught that a father whose children are condemned to live in celibacy would die without honor, and a son would fail in his first duty if he did not beget children to perpetuate his name and family. 82 It is also interesting that the ancient Chinese emperors recognized the degenerative effect of alcoholic beverages upon the offspring, and imposed severe sentences upon wine-makers and drunkards. 8 3 The ancient Egyptians, as the Jews of biblical times, thought of themselves as a specially chosen people of God. They felt they are superior to all others. 8 4 The several thousand years of pre-Christ Egyptian history show that, even with great efforts, the noble ruling castes 8 5 could not preserve the purity of their race. 8 6 From Egypt, we have the first clear division of mankind into four racial groups. 8 7 Although Egypt was geographically well protected against invasions, and the Egyptians tried rigidly to exclude foreigners and immigrants, 8 8 aliens gradually infiltrated the land. 8' After a while, however, the foreign races, 9 0 as the Israelites, became too many and too strong, so that the king planned genocide as a precautionary, 9 1 by killing the new-born Hebrew boys, but letting the girls live. Under the Ptolemies, although hellenzitation was forced upon Egypt as a state policy and immigrant Greeks were not supposed to marry native women, miscegenation became extensive, and even the brother-sister marriages became popular also among the Greco-Egyptians. 9 2 The practice of sister-brother marriages, so common under the Ptolemies, has already started during the XVIII. dynasty. 9 3 The process of reproduction was a subject of religious among the Egyptians. 94 Increase of population was looked as the basis of the State's prosperity, and parents were therefore obliged to feed their children properly. 9 5 The Egyptians also believed in the immortality of the soul, 9 6 and considered children blessing from heaven. Abortion and infanticide were therefore rarely practiced. 9 7 Some of the early medical papyruses (Kahųn, Ebers), dating from the 18th to 15th century B. C., have prescriptions, however, which are now interpreted as abortive and contraceptive measures. 9 8 The first population of the Phoenicians , or Canaanites, settled on the narrow strip of the Levantine Coast. They were the leading navigators and merchants of their time, and maintained close contact with Mesopotamia and Egypt, 9 9 and worshipped the gods of Babylon. In their relatively small communities, they solved the population pressure 10 0 by colonization along the Mediterranean coasts. Carthage was founded ca. 814 B. C. Their laws allowed the marriage of a son with his mother, or of a father with his daughter. Brother-sister marriages was also allowed, mostly for economic reasons. 10 1 The Phoenicians had bad reputations among the Greeks, as kidnappers of children whom they wold into slavery. 10 2 They also developed infanticide as a religious rite 10 3 for Baal Hammon, their chief god, which they practiced until the complete razing of their city in 146 B. C. The genetically important fact is that the selective slaughter of the offspring of the upper classes was just as deletarious on the gene pool as sterilization of the leading families would have been. 10 4 The ancient Jews are the most interesting people for the study of inbreeding and 11
