The prohibitions of various sexual relationships, enumerated in the book of Leviticus and included in the most recent Sabbath Torah reading, are prefaced by a command not to imitate the ways of the Egyptians or the Canaanites, and are followed by another admonition not to imitate Canaanite practices. The text thereby seems to suggest that such relationships, most of which involve forms of incest, were commonplace among both peoples. While little is known about Canaanite law and marital practices, Eve Levavi Feinstein draws upon Hammurabi’s Code (18th century BCE), a Hittite legal code (ca. 1650–1500 BCE), and Egyptian documents to place the biblical prohibitions in context:

The sexual prohibitions in the laws of Hammurabi and the Hittite laws have some affinities with those in Leviticus but are significantly less restrictive. Later Hittite law and [a 14th-century-BCE] treaty point to a wider range of restrictions, but the latter intimates that they were not the norm throughout the region. While the data are limited, these texts at least suggest that the laws of Leviticus 18 were not simply a reflection of the norms prevailing throughout the ancient Near East. They were distinct and most likely unusually strict. . . .

Although Egypt certainly forbade adultery, incest does not seem to have been an Egyptian taboo. As early as the 14th century BCE and through at least the Ptolemaic period [the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE], some Pharaohs married their half or full sisters. There are also documented cases of non-royal marriages between children of the same father from the Middle Kingdom (ca. 1975-1640 BCE) and the Twenty-Second Dynasty (ca. 945-715 BCE), including some that appear to involve full siblings, as well as one marriage between a father and daughter.

The most extensive information on this subject comes from an official census from the 2nd century CE. In the most comprehensively documented region covered by the census, the district capital of Arsinoe, southwest of modern Cairo, 37 percent of all documented marriages are between full siblings.

Taking into account that not everyone has an available opposite-sex sibling and that there was a strong preference for younger women to marry older men, this is close to the maximum of possible sibling marriages. It is the highest level of inbreeding of any known population. Combined with the earlier material, it suggests that Egypt had a very long history of accepting and even favoring marriage between close kin, especially siblings.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.