Study Finds Human Kissing Documented in Ancient Egypt Since at Least 2500 BC
A new study published in the journal Science has found evidence that kissing was practiced in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt as early as 2500 BC. The study’s authors, Troels Pank Arboll and Sophie Lund Rasmussen, are an assyriologist and a biologist, respectively.
Arboll and Rasmussen began their research by examining how the spread of diseases could be affected by the introduction of kissing as a romantic expression. They found that most recent studies cited a source from India, dated around 1500 BC, as the earliest reference to “sexual-romantic kissing.” However, Arboll knew of earlier evidence from ancient Mesopotamia, which had been collected in the 1980s but had not been widely adopted by other researchers.
In the thousands of ancient cuneiform texts available, Arboll and Rasmussen found relatively few references to romantic kissing. However, they did find clear examples illustrating that kissing was considered an ordinary part of romantic intimacy in ancient times. The texts studied implied that kissing was something that married couples did, but also that the kiss was regarded as part of an unmarried person’s sexual desire when in love.
The researchers differentiated between “friendly-parental kissing” and “romantic-sexual kissing.” While the former appears to be ubiquitous across time and geography, the latter is “not culturally universal.”
The findings of this study suggest that kissing has a much longer history than previously thought. It also suggests that kissing was not always associated with romantic love, but could also be used to express affection between friends, family members, and even lovers.
