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.[518] 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.[519]
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.[520]
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.[521]
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 and rôle of woman in Egypt do not seem to me to warrant the importance that is attached to them.
In barbarous, as in civilised societies, there are three great means of influence—religion, military power, and money. In ancient Egypt, Diodorus tells us, woman was judged unworthy of the priesthood, and therefore inferior from a religious point of view. She did not possess any warlike power. Neither monuments, nor writings, nor traditions make any mention of female warriors, analogous either to the Amazons of fable or those of the king of Dahomey. There remains the influence of money, doubtless an enormous influence in all societies where it can accumulate in the hands of certain individuals to the detriment of others. Now, everything proves that if in ancient Egypt women have more or less enjoyed great independence, and have even abused it so as to subject their husbands, they obtained it simply by the power of money.
Evidently the organisation of property and the laws of succession in Egypt permitted women to be rich or to become so, and in consequence to domineer over husbands less favoured in this respect. We shall see that in ancient Greece and Rome the same causes produced the same effects. Is it even necessary to go to ancient times to seek examples of feminine emancipation, even very insolent emancipation, based only on the dowry or fortune? We also have an abundance of plutocratic Amazons. But these facts are not incompatible with the legal subjection of women. If they seem to have been very common in ancient Egypt, it is because legislation did not meddle with marriage; and it must also be remembered that the demotic documents only mention, as is natural, the contracts of the upper or middle classes, the propertied classes, which, of course, are a minority.
So little was gynecocracy inscribed in the laws and customs of Egypt that a simple royal decree depriving women of the disposition of their property sufficed to cast them into the subordinate rank which they have occupied until the present time in all human societies, but which, perhaps, they will not always occupy.
Nevertheless, it is a noteworthy fact that in a society so rigid as the Egyptian, a minority of women should have been able to obtain legally a great amount of independence; it constitutes a remarkable exception, and may, perhaps, be referred to the influence of the Berber races, which, according to Egyptian traditions themselves, played an important part in the foundation of primitive Egypt.