Even with a slight two-year gap, I find my siblings and I often have more differences than similarities. The sharing often stops with biological traits.
So how about a 5,000-year chasm between two vastly different countries: Ancient Egypt and the US?
Surprisingly, you'll find nothing is new under the sun -- especially the hot Egyptian sun.
1. A popular cosmetics industry.
The US spends $8 billion on makeup every year. Ancient Egyptians, surprisingly, may have spent more. Only the elite had precious green, black, gray, and the rare red palettes. They literally took the cosmetics to their graves.
Grave robbers would risk impalement 5 millennia ago to steal these expensive commodities.
2. Glorification of alcohol.
According to an NPR study, popular character James Bond drinks on average 45 drinks a week (6-7 a day). It's difficult to find a movie or song in our culture that doesn't pay tribute to booze in some way.
Same goes for Egypt.
Due to pollutants in the Nile, the rich and poor consumed mass quantities of beer or wine. But they didn't make this purely a necessity. Egyptians enjoyed alcohol so much, they depicted in paintings some women who had downed too much and began to vomit. They even had "celebrations of drunkenness" such as the Eye of Ra.
3. Large portion sizes.
Historian Herodotus remarked about how Egyptians consumed mass quantities of food during feasts. Scribes in late eras advised dinner attendees to limit how much they consumed.
Food was also stuffed into the tombs of deceased family members to help them have a nice snack in the afterlife.
4. Man's best friend*
You cannot scroll through Tumblr without stumbling across a post about a dog. Our culture has an obsession over these canine companions.
Egyptians loved their pets so much they even mummified them. Egyptologists have uncovered millions of mummified canines.
*For you cat lovers, fear not! Egyptians also considered cats superior to dogs because the canine breeds loved too easily. They saw it as a sign of weakness. Egyptians also wrapped cats to join them in the afterlife.
5. They knew how to party.
Ancient Egyptians and US citizens alike know how to party. Our Great Gatsby celebrations match those dancing revelries the Egyptians liked to participate in.
6. If you're single, then you're ready to mingle.
Face it. Our culture has a problem with singles.
Only recent movies, such as "Moana," have allowed for platonic relationships between male and female characters. If you were single in Egypt (whether at 13 or 30), you were ready to mingle. Families would marry off daughters as young as 11, and after divorces or spouse deaths occurred, both men and women sought another partner as soon as possible.
7. Procrastination is an art.
Egyptians hated work! They avoided it if they could. For instance, if the state called them to do work, the elite class could bribe others with cash to do the job for them. Egyptians curtailed labor so much they tried to escape it in the afterlife by making little figurines of themselves in their tombs. If a god called a deceased man to work, he could ask one of the figurines to complete the task for him.
8. They had their own generation of Baby Boomers.
Think of the biggest "shockers" on TV series today: death, proposals, and -- you named it -- pregnancies.
Despite millennials' growing urge to avoid having kids, families still hover around 2 kids per household. Our culture places a huge holy grail on parenthood, and so did Ancient Egypt. Because of an unfortunate infant mortality rate, a woman in Egypt could have 12 kids in her lifetime.
9. Higher education leads to a better occupation.
In high school, I had the idea ingrained into me that I could not make a name for myself if I did not attend a college for at least four years. While there are outliers, statistically my teachers did have a point.
Egyptians had to attend scribal school if they had any hopes of earning decent wages. Exceptions did exist, but rarely.
