Although marriages in ancient Egypt were arranged for communal stability and personal advancement, there is ample evidence that romantic love was as important to the people as it is to those in the present day. Romantic love was a popular theme for poetry, especially in the period of the New Kingdom (1570-1069 BCE) when a number of works appear praising the virtues of one's lover or wife. 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 actual 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