The government of the Pharaohs resembled that of Napoleon, even to the incest. Very often the king married his own sister—occasionally his own daughter—to preserve the purity of the royal blood. It is difficult to say whether this weakened the stock. Certainly Egypt did not think so, after several thousand years of experiment; the institution of sister-marriage spread among the people, and as late as the second century after Christ two-thirds of the citizens of Arsinoë were found to be practising the custom.94 The words brother and sister, in Egyptian poetry, have the same significance as lover and beloved among ourselves.95 In addition to his sisters the Pharaoh had an abundant harem, recruited not only from captive women but from the daughters of the nobles and the gifts of foreign potentates; so Amenhotep III received from a prince of Naharina his eldest daughter and three hundred select maidens.96 Some of the nobility imitated this tiresome extravagance on a small scale, adjusting their morals to their resources.