to give to the woman slaves who are named, and to let her dispose of them without interference from him; he recognizes as hers all debts due to her and makes them collectible by her agent; if the husband collects any of them, he promises to pay the proceeds to her and to pay her a penalty besides. In a corresponding document, by a woman, she acknowledges the receipt of the marriage gift and of her share of the goods, and promises to return the same if she is unfaithful.[1] This last stipulation is an exact inversion of the case where the man, by custom or contract, receives a dower which he must repay if he repudiates the woman. Erman[2] thinks that conjugal relations were happy and affectionate. A widower, who had been told by a magician that his second wife had caused an illness from which he suffered, wrote and put in her tomb a letter of remonstrance, in which he rehearsed his attentions and devotion to her.
The Egyptian mores must be accounted for by the extreme traditionalism of that people which caused survivals of old customs to persist by the side of new ones. Contact with Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks produced change but very slowly, although Egyptian men must have been instigated to borrow foreign customs by all motives of selfish interest and vanity. Paturet[3] thinks that he can discern a change in the marriage system after about 500 B.C.; from a free and equal relation it became more servile on the part of the woman and the Semitic notion that there could be no full marriage without a property pledge was accepted in Egypt. Later the woman, without selling herself entirely, made a contract of limited duty. She was lower
