I was doing some work on another post when this came to my mind. I wonder how different we really are as humans in recorded history.
So, the sources are letters from husbands to wives, tomb carvings and romantic poetry.
What I found is that there is not a jot of difference between men then and men now, women then and women now, and the way men and women related…complete with marriage wars.
Here we have in ancient Mesopotamia from 12,000 ago, first a doctors manual describing the malady of acute romantic psychosis in exactly the way we would describe romantic love today. From the medical text book:
When the patient is continually clearing his throat; is often lost for words; is always talking to himself when he is quite alone, and laughing for no reason in the corners of fields, is habitually depressed, his throat tight, finds no pleasure in eating or drinking, endlessly repeating, with great sighs, `Ah, my poor heart!’ – he is suffering from lovesickness. For a man and for a woman, it is all one and the same (Bottero, 102-103);</blockquote>
Then a 12,000 year old prominent cultural mesopatiamian story about a girl that’s engaged to the farmers son but the shepard is doing her like a floridian girl at an LA porn try out.
She’s engaged but on the the c~~~ carusel and here’s her thinking…she lies and said she was at girls night out , Dancing…hm, familiar.
btw: she’s about to be married by arrangement and Dumzi is her sheperd (bad boy) lover.
<blockquote>She furtively left the house, like an amorous teenager, to go to meet her beloved beneath the stars, which sparkled as she did, then to dally beneath his caresses and suddenly wonder, seeing the night advance, how she was going to explain her absence and lateness to her mother:`Let me go! I must go home! Let me go, Dumuzi! I must go in! /What lie shall I tell my mother? /What lie shall I tell my mother Ningal?’ And Dumuzi suggests an answer: she will say that her girl companions persuaded her to go with them to listen to music and dance (109).
4200 years ago in Egypt we have a rich mans tomb with a carving worthy of any mangina alive today. In a version of “a happy wife is a happy life”:
If you take a wife, do not . . . Let her be more contented than any of her fellow-citizens. She will be attached to you doubly, if her chain is pleasant. Do not repel her; grant that which pleases her; it is to her contentment that she appreciates your work.
If you are wise, look after your house; love your wife without alloy. Fill her stomach, clothe her back; these are the cares to be bestowed on her person. Caress her, fulfill her desires during the time of her existence; it is a kindness which does honor to its possessor. Be not brutal; tact will influence her better than violence; her . . . behold to what she aspires, at what she aims, what she regards. It is that which fixes her in your house; if you repel her, it is an abyss. Open your arms for her, respond to her arms; call her, display to her your love.
Wow, seems that men treated women pretty well back then, hmmm. We even had kitchen bitches: Letter from love lost husband to wife riding the carusel really hard.
Paniskos to Ploutogenia, his wife, greeting.
I enjoined you when I left that you should not go off to your home, and yet you went. If you wish anything you do it, without taking account on me. But I know that my mother does these things. See, I have sent you three letters and you have not written me even one. If you do not wish to come up to me, no one compels you. These letters I have written to you because your sister compels me here to write. But since you find it impossible to write about this, but write thus about yourself. But I have heard the things which [do not] concern you.
Send me my helmet and my shield and five lances and my breastplate and my belt.
I salute your mother Heliodora. The letter carrier said to me when he came to me: “When I was on the point of departing I said to your wife and her mother: ‘Give me a letter to take to Paniskos,’ and they did not give it.” I have sent you one talent by Antoninus from Psinestes. I pray for your welfare.
What a loser with no game…yep all the current regular suspects were present through out history.
The only piece of advice that I have seen in these clearly unchanging relationships between men and women is when the rich man says:
“If you take a wife…”
Not todays: “When you take a wife”
The more things change the more they stay the same.
The advice to not take a wife, the roots of MGTOW present in antiquity.
#icethemout; Remember Thomas Ball. He died for your children.
Cipher Highwind 4 years, 9 months ago.
