Same-Sex Love & Courtship in the Ancient Mediterranean

Arienne King

by Arienne King
published on 08 June 2021

This gallery explores the expression of same-sex love in the ancient Mediterranean through art. The Mediterranean was home to many cultures and societies, each with differing views on gender, sex, and relationships. Art was used to celebrate cultural ideals of love and desire or to subvert social norms.

Every culture represented in this gallery visualized love in its own way and had unique expectations of ideal relationships. Some cultures, like the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans, used similar imagery to convey the dynamics of desire.

Mastaba of Niankhkhnum & Khnumhotep

by kairoinfo4u
published on 31 May 2021

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Mastaba of Niankhkhnum & Khnumhotep — View Full-Size Image

Same-sex love and desire are infrequently depicted in ancient Egyptian art, although Egypt did not have any prohibitions against homosexuality. A rare example is the tomb of Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, two men who have been speculated to be a couple. In art from their shared tomb, Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were depicted in a manner consistent with married couples in Egyptian art. Affectionate scenes from the tomb, like this wall painting, may be some of the oldest surviving depictions of a same-sex couple. Late 25th century BCE. Saqqara, Egypt.

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This image was first published on Flickr. Original image by kairoinfo4u. Uploaded by Arienne King, published on 31 May 2021. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.