Although marriages in ancient Egypt were arranged for communal stability and personal advancement, there is evidence that romantic love was as important to the people as it is to those in today. Romantic love was a popular theme for poetry, especially in the New Kingdom (1570-1069 BCE) when works appear praising the virtues of one's lover or wife.
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The Chester Beatty Papyrus I, dating from c. 1200 BCE, is among these. In this piece the speaker talks about his "sister" but this would not have been his current blood relative. Women were commonly referred to as one's sister, older women as one's mother, men of the same age as brothers and older men as fathers. The speaker in the Chester Beatty Papyrus passage not only praises his beloved de él but presents the Egyptian ideal of feminine beauty at the time:
My sister is unique - no one can rival her, for she is the most beautiful woman alive. Look, she is like Sirius, which marks the beginning of a good year. She radiates perfection and glows with health. The glance of her eye is gorgeous. Her lips speak sweetly, and not one word too many. Long-necked and milky breasted she is, her hair the color of pure lapis. Gold is nothing compared to her arms and her fingers are like lotus flowers. Her buttocks are full but her waist is narrow. As for her thighs de ella-they only add to her beauty de ella. (Lewis, 203)
Women in ancient Egypt were accorded almost equal status with men in keeping with an ancient tale that, after the dawn of creation when Osiris and Isis reigned over the world, Isis made the sexes equal in power. Still, males were considered the dominant sex and predominantly male scribes wrote the literature which influenced how women were viewed.