The assertion of Diodorus seems at first sight inadmissible; nevertheless, the demotic deeds, in a measure, confirm it. If the family subjection of the man was not general in Egypt, at least it existed in a number of cases. In reality, the Egyptian law did not deal with marriages, and the interested parties contracted them at their will. Now, in virtue of the law of matriarchal inheritance, the woman was often richer than the man. She could therefore dictate how the marriage contract should be drawn up. The conjugal union was manifestly before every thing a commercial agreement, since the word husband does not appear in the documents until after the reign of Philopator.[1] The Egyptian woman generally married under the régime of the separate possession of property; she did not change her condition, and preserved the right of making contracts without authorisation; she remained absolute mistress of her dowry. The contract also specified the sums that the husband was to pay to his wife, either as nuptial gift, or as annual pension, or as compensation in case of divorce.[2]
Sometimes even, by acts subsequent to marriage, the Egyptian wife could succeed in completely dispossessing her husband, and therefore the latter was careful to stipulate, as a precaution, that his wife should take care of him during his life, and pay the expenses of his burial and tomb.[3]
To sum up, it appears, indeed, that in ancient Egypt no marital power existed, at least in the families of private individuals.
This state of things lasted till the time of Philopator, who, in the fourth year of his reign, established the pre-eminence of the husband in the family by deciding that thenceforth all the transfers of property made by the wife should be authorised by the husband.[4]
These facts, certainly very curious, have seemed decisive to a number of sociologists who, with Bachofen, like to believe that in prehistoric times there has existed a gynecocratic period—an age of gold, when women reigned as mistresses, and of which the mythic Amazons were a survival. The very incomplete accounts that we possess of the condition
