We have all seen the archetype before. Guy meets girl. Guy is so captivated by girl’s beauty, charm or allure that he decides girl is everything he could want in life. Girl hardly notices guy, but through a unique shared experience she falls madly in love with him over the course of a few days and somehow they live happily ever after. In spite of it being a common archetype of storytelling with romantic themes, not only is it very uncommon for love to happen this way in real life, but when I probe people’s thoughts who are “romantically inclined,” it would seem they don’t really care for this illusion of romance. So the question becomes; why does this archetype continue and what happens when a more realistic depiction of love is introduced into a story?
In ancient Kemet, just like in modern society, marriages were arranged as a method to create a common foundation for stability. Just like in movies of today though, there are many depictions of romantic, spontaneous love along with the sex that comes along with it in Kemetic art and literature. This would suggest that such idealized love is somehow “hardwired” into our collective consciousness as a species.
